Bubblegum Disaster
by dialNforNinja
Summary: 2032 - When a mysterious AI harduit chooses Priss as its pilot, Sylia faces a large security breach... and that's just the beginning of her problems. Multiple fusions; BGC earth in north quarter of DBZ galaxy; large chapter warning - often 13k words plus
1. Chapter 1

Fifteen parts of this fic currently exist, spread over six chapters, corresponding to the first six OVAs of the anime, or at least the relevant timeframes as they diverge more widely. As some are exceptionally long and even the shortest are still big enough to be a good-sized FFn chapter, they will be posted EVERY OTHER day instead of daily. This will also conveniently fill the month of November out. It's a pity I started writing this version of the fic back in 1998, and previous takes further than that, or it'd be a cinch for NaNoWriMo. As matters stand, I count myself as doing well if I write a single scene in a month's time. Ah well, here we go!

01_BD_WOASS_Ch_01

2011-10-31 - fixed scene breaks and added a few notes above  
>2009-11-27 - added four words to 2nd paragraph for continuity's sake.<br>2005-09-21 - decided to re-read what I have to get back into the setting, and made quite a few changes in phrasing along the way  
>01-15-2005 - finally fixed phrasing that's been bugging me forever<br>12-12-2004 - very minor grammar corrections

It began with a shooting star.

A fiery streak burned its way across the Megatokyo skyline, inspiring people all across the city to cast wishes on it as the piece of space junk vaporized and shed smaller bits of itself like a trail of magical glitter cascading into Tokyo Bay.

In a well-maintained apartment, a young woman wished that the stain on her father's legacy might one day be lifted.

A man looking out the window of a lobby wished his car was already repaired.

A girl on a scooter wished she could fight well enough to help her friends when they got in trouble.

A drunk wished he could lay off the booze and go back to his life, as he staggered to the next bar.

A jogger wished she'd learned more from her uncle before he was lost to her.

In a park, two lovers wished for each others' happiness.

A woman wished revenge for her boyfriend.

So many wishes, hundreds of them. With time, a few might even come true...

Bewilderbeast Studios Present

BUBBLEGUM DISASTER

Season One

WISHES ON A SHOOTING STAR

A work of BGC fan fiction by ClassicDrogn

Chapter One

Continuity note: This is set in the original 2032/2033-era series, and while the first few scenes are basically just prose adaptations of the OVA, rest assured that the plot takes a hairpin left at Albuquerque before very long. This is NOT going to be "the Knight Sabers plus Jay Random do all the same things almost the same way," though because most of the conflicts have their roots in events that happen before the series begins they will see most of the initial encounters the same as in canon. Nor is this in any way a self insertion, there are some new characters but the Sabers are the protagonists, and the story mostly follows them. Things will, however, fairly rapidly move to a higher power level than BGC canon. Also, I use "buma" instead of "boomer" (the official translation) or "booma" (what we see on Sylia's computer screen) because it works better as the spoken form of B.M.A., for Bio-Metal Android. (Or as a direct acronym for "Big Ugly Mother****ing Android, if you prefer.) It is both the singular and plural form, like "moose."

A chestnut-haired woman in a red motorcyclist's jumpsuit walked out of a club, a disgruntled expression on her face. "What a jerk. Automatically assuming I was looking for some kind of runaway husband or something," she muttered crossly. "Might as well call in before Sylia gets on my case about it." Having so decided, she headed for a nearby phone booth, not noticing or not paying attention to the two rough-looking men who'd stepped out behind her. Just as she started to dial, the larger of them forced the door open. Spinning, she bit out, "Just who the hell are you?"

The big, sunglasses-clad man just let out a menacing chuckle in reply.

"Buma..." the woman in red snarled, before getting grabbed across the face and taking a punch in the solar plexus that knocked her out.

She came to in the back seat of a car, as the big man asked, "So who the hell is she, ADPolice?" He looked almost comical crammed behind the steering wheel of the subcompact car they were riding in.

The thin man beside her answered, "No, Bogie, I don't think she's with the police."

Bogie grunted again, then replied, "Fine with me. We'll get it out of her in due time when we get to Aqua City."

*Aqua City...* In the back, the woman carefully opened an eye. Seeing that her abductors didn't seem to care what she did, she opened the other and lifted her head a little. It was a bad sign, it meant that they intended to get rid of her and didn't have to worry about having her learn their plans. *Looks like I'm going to have to take out some trash,* she mused. *Crammed down into a disguise like that a buma's only a bit stronger than a human, after all.* Seeing that they were coming to a stoplight, she got ready to take advantage of their inattention.

Accelerating again, Bogie continued, "The others are probably there already."

"Yeah," the thin man agreed, just as she saw her chance.

Grabbing his head and twisting in her best attempt to break his neck she used him as leverage to kick Bogie against the window, making the oversized buma drag the steering wheel and sideswipe the car against the retaining wall. Flipping onto its side, the nose of the car got clipped by a van that had been close behind and the lightweight vehicle was knocked spinning, coming to rest upside down and crosswise to the road, half propped up on the wall and trailing smoke from the crushed engine compartment. It had barely shuddered to a stop before the woman kicked the rear door open, rolling herself out and crouching for a moment as she rubbed her shoulder. Standing, she took stock of her injuries - didn't feel any worse than a few... okay, make that lots of bruises - and cursed her attackers. "Well shit! Don't you assholes even know how to have an accident?" So what if it didn't make a lot of sense, it made her feel better.

About then, the fuel tank exploded, shocking the sore woman. She turned back and smirked, murmuring, "Thanks for the directions, though. What?"

The car's body pan began to distort with a shriek, and a blue arm punched through it.

"Huh? Uh-oh..." She dashed for the idling motorcycle whose rider had stopped at the nearby public phone to call in the accident, yelling "I'll bring it back!" as she jumped on and revved the engine. She quickly swung to face the opposite direction with a squeal from the rear wheel, then kicked it right towards the menacing blue android that had torn its way out of the car. Pulling the blue bike back into a wheelie, she rode right over the mechanoid formerly known as Bogie and sped off down the highway.

Crouching with a synthesized growl, it popped open thrusters on the calves and shoulder blades and rocketed off in pursuit.

Officer Leon McNichol of the ADPolice was patrolling in his car, one of the special highway interceptor models, and thinking about his chance meeting with a local celebrity the night before. He was pulled from his reverie by the sight of a motorcyclist (looking vaguely familiar in that red outfit) blasting past on the other side of the highway at speeds he KNEW couldn't be any less than forty or fifty kph over the limit. That was pushed from his mind when he saw the blue buma chasing the cyclist on a plume of thruster-flare. "Buma!" he gulped, with an expression somewhere between the hunter who's seen his quarry and the swimmer who just saw a waterfall ahead. Hitting the brakes and spinning the wheel, he expertly slid the car between two of the light poles running down the center of the road and spun to face the correct way, then peeled out. As his speed continued to build he activated the retractable air dams and scoop of super-pursuit mode, winding the tachometer all the way to the top of its range as he tried to catch up to the pair.

A streak of fire across the skyline, ending in a splash as what was left of the meteor hit the waves of Tokyo Bay. The news services would later report that it was the remains of a defunct, 1980s vintage communications satellite and unidentified debris that had collided with it and knocked it out of orbit - but this was only the surface truth. In fact, the "unknown debris" had been an artificial construct, but one never touched by the hands of humans; it was the remains of an alien wreck that had been drifting through space for millennia.

The only thing more surprising than this, were it known to anyone, was the fact that a self-contained power supply on the one intact cargo stasis module was still operating, up to the point that it crashed into the bay. Everything outside the stasis field was pulverized into unidentifiable scraps instantly by the impact and thermal shock, while the cargo - mostly small tools and parts - quickly sank into the muck of the bay floor. The only large piece, approximately the size and shape of an earthly industrial-size refrigerator and covered in a multitude of spikes and fins, was protected by the collapsing field long enough that it was allowed to settle safely to the bottom, after skipping over the water at first and then plowing through it as it slowed to a stop, ending up within feet of one of Aqua City's many support pylons. There it stayed, undisturbed until...

(note: looser translations are placed in parentheses when the computer system is writing)

](royal guardian, pronounced roughly mah-SAH MAN-yee) UNIT 215 STATUS REPORT

]POST-STASIS REACTIVATION CHECKS COMPLETE

]MISSION HARDWARE (100%) INTACT

]MISSION SOFTWARE (100%) INTACT

]ARCHIVES (52%) CORRUPTED OR UNRECOVERABLE, (31%) RECOVERABLE, (17%) INTACT

]ELAPSED TIME 68 (large unit of time measurement), 117 (small unit of time measurement)

]SEEKING REGISTERED PARTNER: (ruler's child, pronounced roughly ah-SAH-ga REE) (untranslatable name of a predator, PREE-soo)

]ERROR: PRIMARY IDENTIFICATION DATA CORRUPTED

]ERROR: SECONDARY IDENTIFICATION DATA CORRUPTED

]TERTIARY IDENTIFICATION DATA INDICATES THIS UNIT'S CURRENT ENVIRONMENT IS UNSUITABLE TO SUPPORT OF PARTNER'S FUNCTIONS WITHOUT THIS UNIT'S ASSISTANCE. ACTIVATING INDEPENDENT MOBILITY MODE.

The spines and fins on the oddly shaped construct began to shift, most of them retracting into its mass while others dug it out of the partial covering of muck, and the main section shrank considerably into a mostly humanoid form, a green-tinted visor and numerous faintly glowing gold traceries on its surface breaking up the brushed-metal coloration, human like arms ending in five evenly spaced tentacle-digits, the "legs" fused together like a mermaid's tail and ringed by several sets of fins, now set in an obvious rotor pattern.

The unit spread its "fingers" and the traceries on its arms flared brightly, causing a visible wave of force to be fired from each hand. This lifted the torso free of the bottom, and the sets of rotors around its lower portion whirred to life, holding position a dozen feet above the bay floor. A cloud of fine mud and sand was kicked up, only to clear rapidly as the rotors pulled more clean water down from above.

]ACTIVITY DETECTED IN THE ARTIFICIAL STRUCTURE 52 (unit of distance measurement) ABOVE THIS UNIT'S CURRENT POSITION. PROBABILITY OF REGISTERED PARTNER BEING IN IMMEDIATE AREA: INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR CALCULATION.

]INVESTIGATING ACTIVITY

Leon skidded his interceptor to a stop at the head of the bridge to Aqua City - he'd never quite managed to catch up to the buma, but at least it seemed that the cyclist had escaped it... so far. The blue motorbike was parked there too, the rider nowhere in sight. The only positive thing was that combat buma tended to consider "subtle" to mean only one explosion, and there wasn't any sign of massive violence that he could see either. He opened the car's canopy and got out, pausing to retrieve one of his private stash of heavy weapons - an electromagnetically propelled grenade launcher - before continuing across the bridge on foot.

Aqua City was dark, almost entirely unlit. It had been meant to be a shining example of futuristic architecture to the world, but had fallen afoul of massive budget overruns and legal hassles, and construction had been halted while the superstructure was only three quarters erected, with none of the finishing work done. Every month or so a police sweep would be done to clear out the vagrants, but other than that it saw little activity. Truthfully, there were never many squatters, either, since the structure was a long way from anything but factories and the mostly open platforms provided little if any protection from the elements. Tonight, with the sweep only a few days past, it was almost entirely abandoned, except for a certain woman in a red jumpsuit...

She loped through the dark hallways, trying to keep up speed while minimizing noise, searching for the little girl she and her friends had been hired to rescue, and hoping she wouldn't run into any more buma before finding her. Finally, she came to a large open area, and spotted what looked like her quarry drawing on a wall on the far side. "Hmm..." she hummed. "A map of Megatokyo... Cynthia?"

She'd come halfway across the open-air room by this time, and the little blonde girl stood and faced her, stepping back timidly.

"Don't be frightened, " the woman soothed. "Are you Cynthia?"

The girl looked about before making a small, affirming sound. "Who are you, lady?"

"I'm Priss," the red-suited woman replied. "I've come to rescue you." She stepped closer to the girl and kneeled, reaching out. "Oh look, you've gotten your clothes all dirty." Indeed, the girl's formerly white dress was closer to grey, though the blue bandanna around her neck was still fairly clean. "Are you alone here?"

Cynthia looked around again, before answering, "I don't know."

Priss narrowed her eyes. *I doubt it,* she thought. *This is feeling more like a trap every second. I can't move too fast, though, or she'll get spooked.*

The girl broke into her thoughts by pointing to a part of her picture and saying, "Look at this, lady."

"Hmm? I've seen that somewhere before..." replied Priss. Looking closer, she wondered what would posses a little girl to write 'Screw you!' under a yuckie-face doodle... it DID look familiar, though.

"I did that," Cynthia confided with a small, upwards twitch of her lips.

*Good,* thought Priss. *Hopefully she's beginning to trust me enough to go with me* "Well you're very talented!" she replied aloud. "Come on, let's go home. I'm sure your Mom and Poppa must be worried about you."

A slight quiver in her voice, Cynthia replied, "I have no such people..."

"Huh? What the..." *Why would anyone kidnap an orphan? Unless she was used as some kind of experimental subject...* "What the hell's going on here?" Priss vocalized, distracted from her 'nice adult person' act. Then, she noticed Cynthia's attention fixed on something behind her. With a feeling of dread, she looked over her shoulder.

To her surprise, it wasn't the blue buma she'd escaped from earlier jumping down from a wall, but some type she hadn't seen before, with a green visor, numerous flat, light plates and fins instead of the normal massive buma armor, and a network of gold tracery over much of its form, which glowed ever so slightly in the half-light of the city sky above. Unfortunately, that just meant it was probably some kind of extra-nasty experimental type. Priss went for the parts of her hand-cannon and snapped it together with practiced ease, while the robotic form stood there, examining them.

]ANALYSIS OF SUBJECT A: FORM INDICATES IMMATURE INDIVIDUAL. NOT SUITABLE AS PARTNER. SECONDARY SCAN INDICATES THAT THIS SUBJECT IS A (term meaning the same as "cyborg" but implying outdated technology). NOT SUITABLE AS PARTNER.

]ANALYSIS OF SUBJECT B: FORM MATCHES TERTIARY IDENTIFICATION DATA TO (88%). APPEARS TO BE PROTECTIVE OF SUBJECT A. CROSS INDEXING (ruler's child) ARCHIVE LISTING: DESCRIBED BEHAVIORAL MATCH: PROTECTING THE WEAK. ATTEMPTING (verbal) IDENTIFICATION.

]ERROR: (96%) CORRUPTION OF SPEECH SYNTHESIS LIBRARY.

Priss slapped the first magazine into the ugly little pistol she'd put together, just as the presumed buma confronting her gurgled, "ah-SAH-ga REE PREE-soo!" Her eyes widened as she heard it say what seemed to be her full name, if poorly synthesized.

She kept Cynthia moving back away from the android as she narrowed her eyes and growled out, "How do you know my name?", unconsciously flicking her free hand at herself as she did so, before bracing to fire.

]SUBJECT B IDENTIFIES WITH REGISTERED PARTNER'S (name and title). PROCEED.

]THIS UNIT IS TARGETED BY SUBJECT B WITH (heavy pistol). THREAT ASSESSMENT: MINIMAL. ANALYSIS: SUBJECT B IS WARY OF POOR SPEECH SYNTHESIS POSSIBLY INDICATING A HOSTILE UNIT. PROCEED.

]INITIATING PARTNER LINK.

Cursing, Priss squeezed off a shot and dodged further away from Cynthia, hoping to lure it after her. The android complied, ignoring the tungsten cored .50 caliber slug that had embedded itself in its chest and continuing its lunge, seemingly intent on turning her into a red smear on Cynthia's map. Instead, at the last second the many armor plates on its front side swung away, while rest of its mass flowed like thick liquid and seemed to regain some of what had shrunk away in the initial, underwater shape change. Then, with no time for more than a short shriek from Priss, it splashed around her and formed what had all the look of a mechanical cocoon.

"Lady...?" Cynthia clasped her hands in front of her mouth as the nice lady she'd been talking to was engulfed by a huge (to the little girl) robot.

"Heh heh heh... well, that's one less problem," chuckled the Bogie-buma in its now obviously synthesized voice as it stepped through a side door.

"I wanted to find out who she was working for, though," complained a woman who entered from the opposite direction, with the thin man from earlier and another who was quite a bit fatter.

A fourth man entered by the door Priss had originally used. "The real question is who sent our unusual friend there," he chided, nodding his orange-crowned head towards the cocoon, which was rearranging itself, the green visor moving into position roughly over the eyes of the woman inside and the fins moving about again. "Still, at least Cynthia is still ours. She is the mission objective, after all."

"Heh, guess you're right about that, Frederick." The massive blue buma clomped over to the petrified little girl and reached out an equally huge hand to grab her arm. Just before he could, though, it was severed in a hail of energy bolts from above, and he dropped to his knees with a mechanical howl of pain.

"Shit! Bogie, you stay here with me," ordered Frederick. "The rest of you, get up there and get rid of whoever did that!"

With a whoosh of displaced air the woman and her two companions leapt out of the open room and onto the platform level above. Looking around, they quickly spotted three hardsuits, one light green and grey, with a pair of ribbons dangling from the helmet, one pink and blue with red and white highlights, perched cutely on a ledge, and one white with blue trim, standing dramatically framed by the crescent moon.

"Don't tell me," sneered the woman. "Kidnapping is wrong and in the name of the moon you'll punish us. Hah! Who are you supposed to be?"

The woman in the white suit (as Nene had once put it, even armor couldn't hide -those- measurements) calmly replied, "The Knight Sabers."

"Are we supposed to be impressed by that?" asked the thin guy, before bursting out of his human disguise, revealing himself as another of the blue BU-55c buma. The fat guy and the woman followed suit, though the woman remained female styled, a BU-54c. He immediately unfolded his thruster pack and arm blades, and blasted off towards Saber Green. She leapt to meet him, dodging in midair to plant her hands on each side of his head and swing her legs down to grip his neck.

*Right... there!* she thought, winding up her right fist and activating the knuckle bombers, then slamming it down at the weak spot she'd picked out on the back of the buma's skull. It exploded, blowing the body backwards to fall into the room with Frederick, Bogie, Cynthia, and Priss, while Saber Green used the shockwave to push herself back to a landing on the platform.

Meanwhile, Saber Pink had hopped off her ledge and dashed sideways, the BU-54c keeping even with her until she stopped, then opening its heat beam array to turn her into Kentucky Fried Knight Saber.

Saber White had activated her own flight pack, and much like Green met her buma midair, but with an energy saber rather than a fist. The two halves of her buma fell to rest with the bits of the BU-54c that Saber Green had just slashed with her monoribbons while it was distracted by firing at Pink, who dodged out of the way. White angled her descent to take her into the open room, between Cynthia and her captors, which also put her between them and the cocoon.

Priss had barely had time for a shriek as the grey android charging her seemed to open up and engulf her, tendrils of its flowing core reaching around her to cushion the impact with the wall. *...* was pretty much the sum of her thoughts, combined with *I am sooo dead. Smothered by a melty buma, this is embarrassing.* Thus it was a bit of a surprise to her when she felt the touch of cool, dry air on her face, rather like her hardsuit's ventilation system. Not much of one on top of everything else, of course, but enough that she reflexively gasped a good lung full of it in without pausing to think of whether it might be drugged or poisoned.

The only thing that happened for a few seconds was feeling the weird buma's liquid innards flow over her skull and apparently around each hair follicle, then down, under her outfit and over the rest of her body... an odd, cool/tingly feeling, but hardly unpleasant, and nothing like the horrific rumors she'd heard about the Deep Psychology Scanner. With a growl, she stopped struggling against the restraining metal, since she had absolutely no leverage, and waited for a chance to get free. *I just wish I'd had my hardsuit when I got here, I could've gotten rid of the damn thing before it got to me.*

]FIRST STAGE LINK COMPLETE. ARCHIVES UPDATING FROM PARTNER'S MEMORY. REQUEST FOR PERSONAL COMBAT MODE RECEIVED.

]PERSONAL COMBAT MODE REQUIRES SECOND STAGE LINK FOR COMMAND FEEDBACK. TIME TO SECOND STAGE LINK: 38 SECONDS. INITIATE OBSERVATION MODE IN INTERIM.

As if on her cue, a grid of the glowing traces she'd seen when the mystery mechanoid first showed up formed in the open space around Priss's face, then were covered by a display similar to the one in her own hardsuit. It showed F. G. Frederick, the man she'd been hired to capture, talking to a woman and two other men, while the buma she'd escaped from on the highway was further away, and Cynthia stood rooted where she'd been when Priss had been engulfed. It also showed her that the fins the grey buma was covered in were moving around just beyond the viewpoint it was projecting, as she caught a glimpse of one in the edge of her vision every now and then.

External audio came up just in time for her to flinch at Bogie's mechanical scream as his arm was blown off, and she started struggling against the mass of metal around her again, knowing her friends would need her help against all those buma. She cursed at the lack of effect it had, and sighed with relief, but kept struggling, as only three of them were sent to deal with the other Knight Sabers.

]PARTNER IS BECOMING AGITATED. THREAT TO HER HIGHNESS'S COMRADES IMMANENT. OPERATING PROCEDURES OF PREVIOUS PERSONAL COMBAT UNIT INTERPRETED, CONFIGURING FOR PERSONAL COMBAT MODE. TIME TO SECOND STAGE LINK: 6 SECONDS

Priss felt herself being moved, from the off-balance position she'd been in to a more natural standing posture. It almost felt like she was wearing her normal hardsuit, except without the added height from the heels. *Not that I ever understood why Sylia thought it would be better to have 6" heels on combat suits anyway,* she thought with a grin. *Well, speak of the devil,* she continued, as Sylia's suit landed in front of her. At the same time, there was a wash of cool and tingly through her head, and it suddenly felt like she was barely wearing anything. A voice that wasn't a voice sounded in her head:

]SECOND STAGE LINK COMPLETE. PERSONAL COMBAT MODE ENGAGED. THIS UNIT FUNCTIONS ONLY TO SERVE YOU, PRINCESS. WHAT IS YOUR COMMAND?

*Bwah?* Priss tried moving again. This time, it worked, feeling even smoother than her Knight Sabers hardsuit.

Cynthia had not missed all this, as the white Saber had, having landed facing the buma. "Lady?" she asked, even more timidly than earlier.

"It's okay, Cynthia," soothed Priss, who now resembled a rather feminine, and blue, version of the original humanoid form of the grey and gold android, though a fair number of its fins and plates had been rearranged into a set of wing like extensions from the back, rather like the Pink Saber's suit. "Let's get you out of here."

"What?" Sylia turned sideways, to keep one eye on the buma as she checked her back. *That is definitely NOT Priss's hardsuit, but it sure sounds like her voice.*

Cynthia had no such reservations, though; hearing a friendly voice, even from a weird looking robot that had scared her before, was better than the bad men that had kidnapped her and the robot that had tried to grab her a few seconds ago. Besides, she'd already seen some of the people she'd been with turn into robots, so maybe Priss could too. She ran over to the blue-suited figure, and was scooped up in her arms.

"Not bad," Frederick complimented Saber White, drawing her attention back to him. "I'd say you're definitely superior to the Army's K-12 Armored Troopers. You really did a number on my friends. What do you hope to accomplish?"

Priss cut in with the comment she'd sarcastically made when the Sabers first formed. "To defend peace and justice, and rid the world of evil." She hoped that would convince Sylia of her identity if her voice had not.

"Heh. A worthy objective," said Frederick, "but to achieve it, you must first defeat me." With that, he shredded away the last of his clothes, arms and chest keeping their human disguise except for a trio of metal cables on each side of his neck, while from the pectorals down he was a mass of writhing metal tentacles. Quickly feeding them into and taking control of the headless body of the BU-55c Saber Green had killed, he brought it to its feet.

Sylia turned quickly to the strange suit that was apparently being worn by Priss, and ordered, "Get the girl out of here!" before spinning back to face the buma.

Frederick countered with a command to Bogie. "After them! Don't let those two escape!"

Sylia tried to stop the one-armed buma with shots from the palm blaster of her suit, but a telescoping fist from Frederick grabbed her arm and threw her to the wall. He started to crush Sylia's arm, but a laser blast from above distracted him as it blew half the synth-flesh off his face and ruined one eye. As Sylia got back to her feet, Saber Green, who'd fired the shot, and Saber Pink landed on either side of her. "Good shot, Linna," she congratulated on their scrambled radio link.

Frederick just laughed and lashed out with a storm of tentacles, sinking them into the wall when the three Knight Sabers dodged away on their jets, starting to absorb the structure of Aqua City.

The hardsuited Priss ran through the corridors of Aqua City with Cynthia on her arm, then pulled up short as Bogie leapt out of a cross-corridor ahead of her and opened his heat array. Before he could fire, though, a grenade blasted him from behind, knocking him down and scrambling his processes for a moment. Over the groaning, orange-dripping buma, Leon asked, "Seen a pretty biker anywhere around here? I was hoping we could go on a date."

Sensing that its Partner now wished to hide her identity, the suit computer scrambled her voice in much the same way her normal suit would as she replied. "Cut the crap. I just want to get this kid out of here. Which way?"

Leon got serious again as the buma stirred, and reached for more ammo as he replied. "Uh oh. Go that way!" He gestured along the corridor the buma had come out of, though in the other direction, before continuing to reload.

"Thanks!" Priss chirped as she took off again. Another two shots served to put Bogie down for good, a hole blown completely through his torso and head gone. It was a good thing, because that was the last of his ammunition. Leon made his way back down the corridor he'd come in.

On the open deck of Aqua City, things weren't going too well. Linna, Sylia, and Nene were doing little more than dodging from place to place as tentacles made the floor and walls bulge as if giant moles were tunneling through them. Near the bridge, Priss fell afoul of a similar bulge, losing her hold on Cynthia as she tripped and rolled away from the swelling metal vein. Unfortunately that put her on the other side of it from the girl, and it grew to man-height and beyond before she could do more than get to her feet. A bunch of tentacles wrapped around a nearby crane and made it lash out at her, scoring a deep gouge in the deck as she dodged.

Priss cursed as she heard Cynthia call out for help, then was forced to dodge again as the crane came back for a second pass. *Dammit, I'm going to need my suit - MY suit, that I'm familiar with - and maybe a motoslave to get back to her!*

Reluctantly, she turned and ran, making use of the speed she'd discovered this new... whatever it was... had to cross the long bridge in a fraction of the time it would have taken her unassisted.

Leon made his way to the foot of the bridge just in time to see Cynthia climbing a ladder away from the tentacles below her, while farther away a huge mass of them rose pulsing into the night.

At the foot of the tentacle mountain, the three remaining Knight Sabers stared up in dismay. "THIS is a BUMA?" yelled Sylia.

"That's impossible!" gasped Linna.

A giant, demonic looking buma head had formed at the top of the mound, and roared its anger at the sky.

Mackie had been rather surprised to see an unfamiliar blue hardsuit, rather more ornate in appearance than his older sister's designs, come running across the bridge from Aqua city, heading straight for the "Silky Doll delivery truck" that was actually one of the Knight Sabers' transport vehicles. He was even more surprised to hear Priss's voice coming from it, especially when he knew the only suit she'd be likely to be wearing was still in the back of the truck, along with her red motoslave.

"MACKIE! Great! Break out the med-kit, I know a little girl who's probably got a few scrapes and bumps by now, and I'll be coming right back with her as soon as I get into my regular suit!"

She'd reached up to take off the helmet while saying this, but before even touching it it seemed to fly apart and relocate, the fins on the sides moving down to her shoulders, the mask and visor dropping to her chest, and the top and rear of the helmet vanishing away, presumably to her back. She could still feel the skullcap that had insinuated itself around her hair, though, and she stopped dead as she realized that the HUD overlays were still present in her vision, even without the screen. In particular, her familiar blue and red hardsuit seemed to be getting special attention from them. "WHAT THE HELL!"

]ENHANCED OPTICS REMAIN ACTIVE IN COMBAT STANDBY MODE, explained the voice that wasn't a voice. RETRIEVED DATA INDICATE SIMILAR CAPABILITIES IN YOUR HIGHNESS'S EXISTING OPTIC SYSTEMS

*Oh no. I thought I'd just imagined that... I don't have time to go crazy now!*, Priss thought at it with a sour expression on her face.

]YOUR HIGHNESS'S MENTAL CONDITION IS CURRENTLY WITHIN OPERATIONAL TOLERANCES OF STABILITY.

"Gaaaah. No time now, I have work to do. Off!", she commanded, hoping she wouldn't have to spend too long figuring out the release mechanism for this suit.

]NEGATIVE. COMBAT STANDBY MODE IS THE MINIMUM ALLOWABLE PROTECTION LEVEL IN CLOSE PROXIMITY TO LIVE FIRE ZONES.

"Dammit, get OFF of me, you piece of shit! I need to get my real hardsuit!"

]THIS UNIT EXCEEDS THE CAPABILITIES OF YOUR HIGHNESS'S PREVIOUS PERSONAL COMBAT UNIT IN ALL RESPECTS. CONFIGURATION FOR LINKAGE WITH UNIT DESIGNATED AS "MOTOSLAVE" (a targeting ring popped into existence around her motoslave, then vanished just as quickly) IN PROGRESS, ESTIMATED TIME TO COMPLETION 9 SECONDS.

"This is not over," Priss muttered as she let the helmet reform around her head and hopped onto the transformable motorcycle, revving it and heading back to the action.

Mackie picked his jaw off the floor and shot a worried look at her back as she sped off. "Priss?" *What was that about...?*, the boy wondered.

The Knight Sabers had fallen back to the foot of the Aqua City bridge to regroup after Linna and Sylia had both been caught by the still-growing tentacles and thrown into walls. "It's absorbing all of Aqua City into its matrix!", gasped Sylia.

Movement on the one remaining unassimilated tower caught Nene's attention. "Look, it's Cynthia! Oh no, I'm almost out of thruster fuel!"

"Me, too," Linna chimed in.

"This battle has drained my extended flight pack as well," added Sylia. "and even if we could save her, I don't see what we could do against that... monster-buma." *And I wish I knew what has happened to Priss, if that was Priss. It's not like her to leave a child in a danger zone!*

"It's hopeless!" cried Nene.

Like the cavalry riding to the rescue, this was when Priss came roaring up on the motoslave. "Hey gang, did you miss me?", she greeted as she pulled up.

Not sparing time for further pleasantry, Sylia pointed to where Cynthia was backed against the base of a communications array, urging, "Quick, save the girl!"

"Right!", she replied. "You give covering fire. Ready? Let's go!" Revving the engine again, she bounced her way up a clump of knotted tentacles and used them as a jump, activating the motoslave's transformation in midair. *I sure hope you were telling the truth about being able to do this, Miss Crazy Voice In My Head*

]MOTOSLAVE LINKAGE COMPLETE was her only reply, as the over-the-shoulder fans spun up, and she flew to Cynthia's perch. She landed and once again gathered the girl in her arms, but before she could take off five huge tentacles reached around the edge of the platform and grabbed the motoslave's frame, while more of them began to assimilate the platform itself. The whole tower was beginning to look disturbingly like an arm sized to match the huge head, holding them up like a prize in front of it.

]WARNING! MOTOSLAVE UNIT IS UNDER ATTACK BY NANO-ASSIMILATORS!

]THIS UNIT IS NOT VULNERABLE TO ATTACK BY NANO-ASSIMILATORS.

]SUBJECT "CYNTHIA" IS VULNERABLE TO ATTACK BY NANO-ASSIMILATORS.

]THIS UNIT RECOMMENDS DISENGAGING MOTOSLAVE UNIT AND RETREAT WITH SUBJECT "CYNTHIA"

"Great idea," growled Priss, "So glad I've got a BOARDER to tell me these things." The clawed hand closed further, starting to crush the motoslave's frame. Hurriedly, she commanded it to open and release her, which fortunately it was not yet too damaged to do. She vaguely noticed a dark grey helicopter taking off from the far side of Aqua City, but ignored it for the moment.

"Oh no! Ladeeeeeeee!", Cynthia cried as a tentacle reached for her foot. *Why won't they leave me alone! They're bad, anyway, they're part of that robot-man who stole me. They should be stopped!* She turned, to look at the monstrous buma head that was perched on a mountain of tentacles, rapidly coiling themselves into a body and upper arm connected to the hand she and Priss were trapped by. *Stop!* She thought at it, glaring with her eyes and with the overhead picture she saw sometimes. "STOOOOP!"

Priss got ready to jump, in a suit that had yet to demonstrate independent flight ability, but Cynthia seemed focused on the huge metallic skull leering at them. She stiffened, then yelled, "STOOOOP!"

In space, a satellite obeyed the commands fed to it, to find a certain target and stop it. A blue-white beam, several hundred times hotter than the sun, stabbed out, lighting the darkness of space with its fury. It plunged down through the atmosphere, diminished slightly in much the same way that a rock is diminished slightly by erosion as it's thrown through a waterfall. Down, though the clear, high skies, through the clouds, through the Megatokyo smog, and through the forehead of the monstrous buma that had attracted the ire of its mistress. It stopped its roaring, and all over the mangled Aqua City the tentacles drooped, in some cases falling to pieces as the directing intelligence behind them lost contact. The palm of the giant hand continued to writhe, though, and caught Cynthia's right leg with several small strands just before Priss could jump for it. They quickly tore through the artificial flesh and began their work.

*The satellite weapons...*, a stunned Priss thought, staring at the stricken monster-buma head.

]WARNING! SUBJECT "CYNTHIA" IS UNDER ATTACK BY NANO-ASSIMILATORS!

"What! SHIT!", she swore. "What do I do now? Cynthia!"

]PREVENTION OF FURTHER NANO-ASSIMILATOR CONTAMINATION URGENT! PREEMPTIVE REMOVAL OF INFECTED LIMB WILL REMAIN EFFECTIVE FOR 1.8 SECONDS.

The little girl just stared at her leg with horrified grey eyes, images flashing through her mind - the buma that had delayed them in the corridor, opening its chest to fire - a camera, watching her - the tentacle ripping into her foot - the city from high above - herself, lying on a table with cables attached all over - the tentacle again, and the pain as it invaded her leg - the beam that had just blown through the skull on the mountain of tentacles - the city from above again, but closer; she could see herself and her friend. "Heeeeelp meeeeeeee!" she screamed, as she reached for the place in her mind that she'd told to stop the monster and mentally pounded on it. A hellstorm of the blue beams struck out in response, pounding the mountain of buma to pieces and toppling the huge hand towards the bay.

*She never even knew she was a buma...* Clinging for both their lives, Priss apologized to Cynthia, "I'm sorry honey, but this is going to hurt. I PROMISE I'll make it all better as soon as we're safe!" Blinking through the sudden tears in her eyes, she extended one of the fins on her arm, and slashed through Cynthia's infected leg at the thigh, quickly grabbing it with her other hand and clamping down to prevent blood loss, not bothering to notice that the "blood" was buma-orange as she wrapped her dirtied arm around the shocked girl's torso and kicked off the falling hand, still trying to crush them. It finally blew the motoslave's powerplant just as she did so, the explosion shattering the huge hand.

From the transport truck, the other Knight Sabers watched with horror as their teammate and rescuee seemed to be blown to pieces. They'd fled the area when the beamsat had started firing, not wanting to be caught in its blasts. "Priss..." the Sabers' leader whispered, while Linna staggered back against the truck.

"Oh, kami," Nene howled, as she dropped to her armored knees. "Nooo..." The pink-suited Knight Saber began sobbing, not caring if she made a scene.

The circling grey tilt-rotor spiraled higher and lowered the engine nacelles into cruise configuration. The poker faced executive inside gave commands into a microphone before sitting back for the ride to Genom Tower on the other side of the bay.

Mackie jumped down from the truck and walked over to Nene, the most obviously distraught of the three. He wrapped an arm around her armored shoulders. "Hey, you know Priss," he comforted. "She's rough on the gear, but always gets through in the end."

Nene didn't bother to answer, she just wrapped her arms around him and hugged... of course, since she was still in her armor this reduced Mackie to a strangled wheeze as he tried to breathe. Fortunately for him, that was when Priss's strange new suit burst out of the water to land on the dock, the whirling blades that had driven it out of the water splitting up and returning to their positions as the fins and wings he'd seen when she came for the motoslave, the fused legs separating, the torso and head covered in a large bulge of the suit's material. It split open to reveal Priss still holding the rather grey-looking Cynthia with one hand and keeping her from bleeding out from the stump of her right leg with the other. "Medical emergency, Sylia! Get the van ready!"

Shaken out of her surprise, the white Saber scrambled into the van's side door, hitting the emergency release on her armor even as she dropped the ambulance-style pallet from its stowed position on the wall. Kicking the disconnected pieces of her suit out of the way, she directed Priss to lay the girl down and let go. *I'd hoped I'd never have to use this equipment, but it's a good thing I had it installed,* she thought as she yanked a proper tourniquet tight. "Mackie! Get driving for the base! Linna, get Nene in here and then radio ahead, tell Doctor Raven to have the buma tool kit ready in the operating room!"

Priss just kneeled next to the pallet and held Cynthia while Sylia worked with what limited supplies they had that would help a damaged buma. Finding out whether the girl was totally artificial or just a high-percentage bumaroid would have to wait. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I had to do it honey, we'll fix you right up," she gasped, over and over.

In a residential district devastated by the Second Kanto Earthquake of 2026 and still unrecovered, a man with bright blue hair and a woman with bright red hair, both looking to be in their early twenties and carrying massive travel-packs worn over long, black coats, stepped cautiously through the darkened streets. They moved like they were expecting trouble, but without fearing it - like great beasts on the prowl. Finally, they stopped in front of a partially collapsed boarding house, not significantly different from anything on the rest of the street.

The pair seemed to concentrate for a moment, standing facing slightly different directions as they scanned their surroundings, but apparently found no sign of what they were looking for. The man turned to his ... sister? cousin? wife? ... with a hopeful look, but she shook her head. Drooping slightly, he put an arm around her shoulders, and they continued off down the street. They had noticeably less spring in their steps than on the approach, but just before turning another corner the woman slipped her arm up behind his pack as well.

Next time: Brian J. Mason jr. is a power-obsessed snake in the grass. See him walk down the path of destiny... a slightly altered destiny, anyway... in the award winning feature fic _What About Brian?_ Oh, wait, that's actually the next chapter of Bubblegum Disaster.

I know that Priss hates buma. I know she's not acting like it in regards to Cynthia and especially the alien hardsuit/robot/whatever she's so calmly wandering around in. Rest assured, it will be addressed in the next chapter. No, she's not ACTUALLY an alien princess, the entire civilization that created the suit is gone, and if you consider that a great ape is a 97% or so match for human, an 88% match for gross anatomy (aka, 'tertiary identification data') isn't all that exact. If I was going to make her an alien princess, her last name would be "Kotobuki" and she'd be blonde.

Many thanks to my prereaders: Patricia Kostan (who knew nothing of BGC, and helped make sure the story was understandable to people who were not familiar with the series), Nathan Baxter (who sent me liberal doses of that most underestimated of useful things, Unbridled Excitement), Hide Hasegawa (who also helped with Japanese), and Kaitlin Coelho.

Bubblegum Crisis belongs to Youmex and Animeigo, I make no claims otherwise. Please don't sue me, I have no money to speak of and fanfic does more to promote your products than anything else I know of - without it, I probably never would have known about anime at all, and I'd certainly never have bought the BGC tapes based on the sucky box copy.

EOF


	2. Chapter 2

**The first chapter has had the scene breaks fixed, if you found it confusing before it might be worthwhile to reread.**

02_BD_WOASS_Ch_02

2010-10-29 - found and annihilated a pet peeve grammar error  
>2009-11-21 - more minor polishing while rereading<br>12-12-2004 - minor grammar and sentence structure corrections

#PASSWORD IS IN THE WRONG

In a small room, lined on three walls by a massive computer, a poker faced executive sat at the control console, an oversized neural interface helmet on his head.

#PASSWORD IS IN THE WRONG

The activity light on the data cartridge drive in front of him flicked on and off regularly as the system attempted to access it.

#PASSWORD IS IN THE WRONG

Unfortunately for him, it was encoded with a state of the art military security algorithm.

#PASSWORD IS IN THE WRONG

On the other hand, the computer he was using was well beyond the current "state of the art," in both hardware and software.

#PASSWORD IS IN THE WRONG

Still, he had been working on cracking it for nearly six hours.

#AN ACCURATE SOLUTION. DATA MEDIA CONTAINS 10,628 FILES IN 2,418 DIRECTORIES.

#MULTI-SEARCH PARAMETERS ACCEPTED: ORBITAL BEAM SATELLITE; CONTROL CODE; CONTROL SCHEMATIC; CONTROL INTERFACE; FIRE CONTROL; PROJECT KILLER DOLLS

He allowed a small smile to cross his face briefly, sending some more commands to the system before doffing the helmet and rubbing his temples.

#DATA TRANSMITTED TO GARD JRM FACILITY PROJECT ZEUS

Composing himself, he left the computer room, heading for the in-building executive suites. It wasn't as if he had time to go home, after all.

Bewilderbeast Studios Present

BUBBLEGUM DISASTER

Season One

WISHES ON A SHOOTING STAR

A work of BGC fan fiction by ClassicDrogn

Chapter Two

The plaque on the outside of the building read "Genom Appliance Research Division - John R. Maytag Research Facility - Dedicated to convenience, low maintenance, and building a toaster you can really set the darkness on." Inside, technicians carefully assembled and tested a hulking, red... novelty toaster. Suuure. Cover stories aside, it was clear that the buma they were building was larger and equipped with greater synthetic muscle mass than the blue BU-55c series, and it wasn't even complete yet.

While one team worked on attaching the right arm and head, another tech watched over the rapid-prototyping nanite tank that had just started growing a new subcomponent based on designs downloaded from the central Genom mainframe. Within fifteen minutes, it was complete, and the shoe-sized grey box was installed in the chest cavity of the buma, which was itself nearly complete.

Clearly, Genom liked its toast "extra dark."

The morning after. A time to wonder what exactly you did after the party got hazy, a time to get on with life, a time to bask in the glow of the rising sun. For Sylia Stingray, it was the time she could finally slump onto the couch outside the Knight Saber Headquarters' ensuite operating room and try to get up the energy to shower away the various fluids clinging to her armor's softsuit and her own skin before falling unconscious after a long night of buma surgery, following a long evening of combat, following a full day running her shop, The Silky Doll. She eyed Priss, asleep on the opposite couch still wearing the strange blue hardsuit she'd fought in the night before, with a detached envy. Sure, she'd be sore when she woke up, but at least Priss had gotten to the 'sleeping' part. Linna and Nene had left for their own rooms in the complex hours ago.

She was distracted from her thoughts by the O.R. door opening again to let out an older man, his wild white hair tied back under a medical cap and his outfit - a cross between surgical scrubs and a mechanic's overalls - as stained as Sylia. "She's shut down for self-maintenance mode," he reported, "and I have a full scan of her intact leg. I should be able to mirror it and construct a duplicate with your facilities quite easily, though it will take me a day or two."

"That's good, Doctor Raven," the bluish-haired Knight Saber replied. "I'm sorry I had to leave you to finish up."

Dr. Raven reached out and laid a hand on her shoulder. "That's quite alright, Sylia. I'm aware of how long your day has been. It seems to be a hereditary trait; I was always dragging your father away from twenty-hour work sessions when we were in graduate school. Now, off to bed, young lady." he finished in a mock-authoritative tone.

A small smile on her lips, Sylia shook her head at her aging friend and hoisted herself off the seat. With a weary gait she headed to the showers.

Priss, meanwhile, was lost in a maze of nightmares - not really uncommon for her, but less frequent since she'd joined the Knight Sabers and started striking back at some of her fears. A huge man-machine with burning eyes and the lens of a beam cannon held in his gaping mouth grabbed her head and threw her against the wall of a phone booth, then the lens in his mouth flashed and burned the eyes out of her head. Somehow, she could still see the monster reach up and pull out his own eyes, which turned into a pair of red irised Kurosawa cyber-eyes in the palm of his hand, and pop them into her sockets. His features turned into the bully that had been the terror of the orphanage she'd spent three years of her life in, who was wearing a police uniform. His empty eye sockets bled orange buma blood as he told her that her parents had died, told her it had been necessary to hunt down her boyfriend after he'd gone berserk from Bumaroid Dissociative Disorder. Then the earthquake came, and he was crushed under the collapsing upper floor in front of her. She ran away from the ruins of the orphanage and heard a little girl crying for help, but she had to get to safety. She stopped anyway, and turned back, to find the little girl in front of a picture of the city, which dripped with red and orange blood. She tried to reach the girl, but no matter how far Priss walked she was still just as far away, until a giant grey devil-buma jumped between them. It told her it existed to serve her, then leapt forward and split open all down the front into a gaping, fanged mouth that swallowed her whole, and ice-cold metal tentacles ate into her body. It told her how wonderful she was going to be, a perfect buma-woman, and then she was naked, with metal fins jutting out of her body and dripping orange blood. The little girl stared at her in fear, and one of the girl's legs turned into blue steel, then her eyes glowed with fire and a bolt of energy slammed into Priss, burning away her skin, her muscles, only the metal left, and red Kurosawa eyes...

...Priss woke from the nightmare with a strangled scream, sitting up on the couch and struggling with the alien hardsuit she still wore, ignoring the fins shredding the upholstery as she ripped at the collar and shattered the green visor resting against the base of her neck, turning the suit's own strength against it. *offoffoffoffoutgetawayOFF!* was about the sum of her conscious thought. "GYAAAAH!" she screamed, as she felt it writhe against her body for a moment, then - finally! - flowed away from her, leaving her clothed in the battered red jumpsuit she'd started with the previous day as it reformed in front of her, kneeling on the floor.

A voice that sounded like her own, but flat and mechanical, replied quietly, "this unit exists only to serve you, your highness."

Forcing a measure of control, Priss angrily retorted, "Well, serve yourself right into the trash compactor, you walking scrap heap!"

"causing or allowing harm to come to your highness through action or inaction is in violation of this unit's directives. self destruction or distant removal of this unit is therefore in violation of this unit's directives," it calmly replied.

"Yeah, whatever," she grumped. "Just stay away from me!" With that, Priss turned her back on the mechanoid and stomped away to her room. Stopping in front of the door, her angry face twisted even more as she heard it following her. "I said, STAY AWAY you piece of shit!", she yelled as she slammed the door on it, the click of the dead bolt adding finality to her words. For lack of further instruction, it took up a sentry position outside the door.

Inside the room, Priss leaned in close to the mirror over her night stand, reading the tiny Kurosawa logo on her red irises. After staring into her own reflection for a few minutes, she flopped backwards onto the bed, and tried to go back to sleep.

Awakened by noises in the hall, Nene made her bleary-eyed way to the shared bathroom of the in-base residential facilities. *Doorjamb*, her mind noted, as she lifted her foot a little higher to keep from tripping. *Plant on table in hall.* Sidestep. *Priss's new suit by door.* Sidestep. *Corner of throw rug.* Long stride. *Doorknob.* This one was trickier, she had to stop her legs and move her arms. Lift, twist, push, done. Still not really awake, she wobbled into the bathroom to do her morning routine.

Several minutes later, a rather more aware Nene was fixing her hair in front of the mirror. "Oh, I'm sooo glad I have a short shift tonight," she yawned. "I'd be really bushed if I had a full day today after last night..." She trailed off, remembering the high points of the last twenty four hours. A good many of them involved explosions and/or running away, making her frown at her reflection. *Someday I'd really like to get better at fighting,* she thought. She could admit, to herself at least, that she was the weakest of the Knight Sabers when it came to actual physical combat, though in data hacking and cyber-combat she had no equal. As much as she might tease Priss about being a "gorilla woman", she wouldn't really mind being able to hold her own in battle - it was embarrassing always having to be the one to ask for backup.

For just a few seconds, when they'd made their dramatic entrance, she'd felt a guilty pleasure at bailing the rowdy singer out for once, though there had quickly been more important things to think about... like the 54c that Linna had to take out while she distracted it. "aww...", she groaned. *And what's the deal with that hardsuit Priss was wearing? ...* Nene's eyes widened as she remembered something more recent. Spinning to the door, she whipped it open, paling as she saw the blue and gold suit standing sentry outside Priss's door, looking quite a bit more skeletal than would be possible with the pilot inside. "Yeek!" she squeaked as its head turned to look at her, the visor crazed with silver-lined cracks. She yanked the door shut again and leaned back against it with wide eyes.

*Ohmygoshit'!*, she thought, heart racing. She straightened, and took another peek out the door, opening it barely wide enough for her eye. The ... buma-suit ... was still there, and still looking her way. It cocked its head at her, and she slammed the door shut again with a jump. Collecting herself again, she tried to calm down. "Alright Nene, it's not going away. What now?", she asked herself. "Arrrgh. This is too much stress before coffee!"

]RECOVERABLE DATA 100% RETRIEVED. ANALYSIS: HEADER FILES FOR NON-COMBAT INTERACTION. RECOVERED DATA INSTRUCTS WHEN AND HOW TO USE EXTERNAL INTERACTION SCRIPTS. SEARCHING...FILES NOT FOUND. ANALYSIS: FILES CORRUPTED AND UNRECOVERABLE. CROSS REFERENCING HEADER FILE SITUATIONS WITH RETRIEVED ARCHIVES FROM PARTNER. ACCESSING ARCHIVES: BODY LANGUAGE... WARNING: CROSS REFERENCED ARCHIVES INDICATE IT IS IMPROPER FOR AN INFERIOR TO ACT INFORMALLY IN THE PRESENCE OF A SUPERIOR. PROCESSING DATA... COMPILING SCRIPTS...

At the end of the short hall, the bathroom door was opened with excessive speed, and the pink-haired companion of Her Highness stood in the doorway. Rather than merely note this and carry on, as it had when she'd stumbled by earlier, the Royal Guardian acknowledged her presence by turning its head. She reacted with apparent fear, exclaiming and slamming the door closed again.

]CHECKING FOR POSSIBLE INTERPRETATION ERROR: HEAD TURNING PERCEIVED AS HOSTILE ACTION... RESULTS NEGATIVE UNDER CURRENT CONDITIONS. SUGGESTED ACTION TO REASSURE PARTNER'S COMRADE: INDICATE CURIOSITY RATHER THAN HOSTILE INTENT

The door opened again, just wide enough for a blue eye to peep out. Guardian 215 cocked its head at her, as its newly restored files indicated was the proper method of expressing curiosity. The door whumped closed a second time. Enhanced audio sensors detected Nene speaking quietly in the bathroom, but were unable to make out the words over the restless noises from Her Highness's room and the sound of another presence in the food preparation area at the other end of the hall, tentatively identified from retrieved archives as Mackie Stingray by the type of sounds and past behavioral patterns.

]ACCESSING ARCHIVES: NON-COMBAT INTERACTION WITH KNIGHT COMPANIONS... PROCESSING DATA... COMPILING SCRIPTS...

The bathroom door opened fully again, and Nene stood for a moment framed by it, her face set and shoulders squared. She stepped briskly down the hall, head turning to keep the Guardian in full view as she came even with it. "hiya nene," the flat, synthesized Priss-voice greeted her.

Nene's eye bugged out and she nearly missed a step. She turned her upper body and kept moving, barely, and managed to squeeze out a weak "Hi there..."

Encouraged by this apparent progress, 215 countered by asking, "how's it going," though without inflection the question sounded almost like a statement.

Totally spooked, Nene just broke for the kitchen, where she could smell coffee, the sweet nectar of life, brewing, and where she desperately hoped there would be no weird buma that acted like old buddies.

]OBSERVATION ADVISES AVOIDING INITIATION OF NON-COMBAT INTERACTION BEFORE ALL ARCHIVES ARE PROCESSED AND COMPILED. ACCESSING ARCHIVES: SPEECH INFLECTION...

Mackie had been sent off to bed by his sister/guardian almost as soon as the Sabers had gotten back to their headquarters, since it was already nearly six AM. He'd awoken around one thirty, just in time to fix "breakfast" for the sleepy Linna, who had an afternoon aerobics class to teach at two thirty. He'd left then too, to clean up the Silky Doll van and piece Sylia's hardsuit back together, but had returned once he finished hoping to get glimpses of Nene and Priss in their nightwear as they woke, on the pretense of brewing their coffee and making breakfast. He'd missed Priss's stormy entrance and Nene heading for the showers in the interim, but could hear the water running at the end of the hall, and knew she'd soon wander out for the first coffee of a new... well, evening, really. He heard the bathroom door open and close several times in the space of five minutes or so, then an apparently subdued Priss greeting Nene, who for some reason didn't seem to be expecting it. Unfortunately, he was busy emptying the coffee filter at the time and couldn't go look without dripping all over the floor. Finally setting down the coffee maker, he was utterly shocked to see Nene, clad in a frilly pink bathrobe, come barreling into the room with a terrified look on her face.

"MACKIE!", she gasped. Bracing for the slap he was almost sure was coming, though for once he wasn't sure why, he wasn't prepared for her to grab his arm and drag him out the door into the HQ hallway, inadvertently pulling him close as she turned to shut the door behind them. Thus it was that Nene found herself in possession of one blushing teenage boy, snuggled happily against her front while she held the door closed and panted. The smack he got for his trouble would probably last for the rest of the day, but the memories... He sighed as he rubbed his cheek and peeled himself off the wall.

"Can you be serious for one minute!" Nene's angry face seemed to fill his vision as she leaned in close. "That weird suit Priss was wearing is in there, outside her door!", she chided in an angry whisper.

Mackie gave her a puzzled look, considering it odd perhaps that Priss would leave her suit in the living quarters, but hardly grounds for such a fuss. "So? I'll go take it down to the storage bay, then." He tried to sidle along the wall, out of Nene's face, but she grabbed his arm again and held him in place.

"No! It's standing there on its own! And it said hello to me!", she continued.

Realization dawned on Mackie's face like the sun rising on Mount Fuji. With the presence of danger, he was serious. "We'd better get Sis on this," he advised. Again he tried to get loose, but Nene had just realized something even worse.

"Mackie!", she hissed. "You have to go back in there and save the coffee!"

"Really, Nene. 'You have to go back and save the coffee'?" Amusement warred with reproach in Sylia's voice as she finished watching the internal security footage of the whole incident.

Nene scuffed her hardsuited foot against the floor, face downturned as she blushed. Trying to change the topic, she asked, "Why didn't the security sensors go off if there was a buma running around loose after Priss?"

Accepting the dodge, Sylia nodded towards the security panel, currently adorned with their helmets. "Scans of the ... intruder ... show that its construction is almost totally dissimilar to buma, almost as much as it is to human physiology. Its armor plates are some form of ceramic, the musculature is more like the linear actuated flat-motors of our own hardsuits than buma synthetic muscle, and the processor core, if that's what this is (she tapped a screen, showing a false-color image of the Guardian as recorded by the magnetic resonance imager installed in the small entryway of the main lift) appears to be a modular, distributed optical network. Most of its structure appears to be extremely modular, held and repositioned as needed by nanites, which make up a full third of its overall mass. Normally the system still would have logged it as an anomaly and sounded an alarm, but it entered in the form of Priss's armor, so it was tagged as 'authorized'."

Further discussion was cut off, as the live monitors showed Priss's door opening, the unknown mechanoid stepping back as it turned around, and kneeling as it had that morning in the waiting room. The living area camera wasn't equipped with a microphone, so they couldn't hear the tirade Priss evidently leveled at the construct, but they could see it rapidly dodge out of the way as the angry woman tried to lay into it with her fists.

"What is she DOING?", Nene wailed. "Does she WANT it to kill her!"

"Get ready," Sylia warned. "It looks like they're heading for the lift." She passed Nene her helmet before retrieving her own white and blue one from the console and leading Nene back to the trap they'd hurriedly improvised at the lift doors. Mackie stayed in the security room to work the console for their plan.

Priss growled to herself as she stalked towards the main lift, feeling really ripshit. *First that damn buma-thing fucks around while I'm trying to fight, now it won't leave me alone!* She ground her teeth as she heard the even steps of the Guardian following her. *Then it won't even stand still and get hit like a good piece of shit pile of scrap, and THEN it has the audacity to-* "-use my OWN DAMN VOICE!", she finished aloud. She stabbed the call button on the control panel, then whirled around and jabbed a finger at the still-following robot, forcing it to slide backwards or risk having her damage her hand on its armor. "NEVER USE MY VOICE!" the indignant singer screamed.

Just then, the lift doors opened, and she stepped back into them, not bothering to turn around. Having them slam shut, and the security blast door behind them shocked her out of her tirade. "What the HEEEeeeeeeellllll..." she trailed off as the car dropped away under her, faster than even free fall would have driven it. She heard the lift shaft security doors slamming one after another just over the roof of the car as she grabbed for the railing in a desperate bid to keep from knocking her head on the ceiling as the elevator plummeted down into the subterranean levels of the base, slowing only enough to let her get most of the way back to the floor before jerking to a halt.

Pulling herself to her feet, she peered out through the opening doors to see Sylia and Nene in their suits, her own in its portable ready rack just behind them. A predatory grin formed on her face as she stepped out, and quickly changed into the softsuit Sylia handed her.

Royal Guardian 215 barely felt the first tug of "worry" before the clarity and directness of purpose of Independent Combat Mode shut down its new non-combat programs. It lunged forward to try to block the doors closing between it and its Partner, but only managed to get its fingertips jammed between the halves of the slamming blast door. It was enough to keep the door-edge locking mechanisms from operating, though, and with the other hand crammed into the gap as well it was more than strong enough to rip the doors apart to follow Her Highness into the lift... except that it wasn't there any more, just an empty shaft with another set of blast doors, properly closed, at floor level. A quick look up the shaft with its nearly completely repaired optics revealed that the car was not in the upper section, which left the hard way to go. Several of the larger blades on its back deployed to make a deeper scan, finding that the space beyond this pair of doors was empty, but the system was too short-ranged to scan through more than one set. The gold traces on the arms of the android glowed fiercely as it leapt, and shockwaves of force slammed into the security doors, one after another fired from alternating hands. Each one caused the heavily armored panels to bulge downward noticeably, until at about the fifteenth blast they cracked into shards and broke. Not letting up the assault, 215 let itself drift downward on the backwash as it scanned through the already weakening doors below. Still nothing.

]USAGE OF HIGHER FORCE LEVELS *REQUIRES* PERSONAL COMBAT MODE. RECOVERY OF THIS UNIT'S PARTNER IS PARAMOUNT

Twelve storeys further down, it finally came to the lift car, half smothered by the wreckage of all the security doors that the Guardian had burst through, but intact. The still active scanning array revealed that it was as empty as the shaft had been, so a simple concussion boosted kick sufficed to crush the ceiling in and let 215 through. Not surprisingly, the lift door was blocked by another pair of armored panels, which were as quickly disposed of as the earlier ones. It stepped through into a hallway intersection, all three passages blocked a few feet down by still more security doors. Before it could focus the scanner again, the set directly in front of it whisked open, to reveal the blue and red personal combat suit Her Highness had so adamantly wanted to use.

"Surprise, bolthead!" Priss snarled as she fired all eight railgun spikes, two through the head, one in each chest, two in the gut, and one to each shoulder. The sudden damage and system shock scrambled its neural net for a critical instant, as the doors to its left popped open as well. Sylia jumped into action, energy saber already active, and dismembered it.

"You're through," the white Saber added, as the head, arms, legs, and two parts of the torso fell to the floor with a clatter.

Nene's set of doors opened, her own wing like transceiver arrays deployed, and fired an electromagnetic pulse at the wreckage as soon as Sylia had jetted back from the target zone. Small trails of smoke rose from a dozen places on the Guardian, as the microwave transducers that controlled the nanites burnt out. Small puddles of silver sand sifted out of the pieces as the directionless micro-machines shut down and let go of their perches, and those components that hadn't been bonded on their own fell loose with a clatter. "And that's that!", she crowed, hopping and making a V-sign.

In the security room, Mackie sighed as he resigned himself to cleaning up the mess, but perked up considering what he might be able to learn from such totally modular components and adapt for the Knight Sabers to use. Sylia was never stingy when it came to letting him work on their technology, as he was almost as good with it as she was, herself.

After a quick visit in the recovery room, where Cynthia remained in self-repair mode, Priss left for the Hot Legs bar where she had a show to put on tonight. Nene left to go to her job in the ADPolice Records Department a bit worried for her friend - after all the emotion she'd shown in the Sabers' van and spending the morning outside her operating room, Priss had barely spent two minutes looking in on the little buma-girl. *I know Priss doesn't like buma, but if that was the case why did she care when Cynthia got damaged in the first place? Is it just because she looks like a child?*, the pink-haired Saber wondered as she putted through the gathering dusk on her motor scooter.

On the stage in her blonde wig, halter-top, and micro skirt, Priss moved to the driving steel of the guitars and the beat of the drums, letting the music sustain her and drain her as she let her emotions run loose. She sang _Hurricane_, and remembered the twelve year old girl whose parents died in an accident, and who had to grow up too fast in an orphanage, longing for a loving touch. She sang _Angel of Loneliness_, and remembered the older girl who'd escaped the orphanage in the wreckage of an earthquake, then fallen in with a biker gang for protection, and lost her sight to the glare of a rampaging buma's mouth-cannon at close range. She sang _Mad Machine_, and remembered her boyfriend, who'd become the leader after the three higher ranking members got killed by the same buma, as he felt the pressure of his family's final rejection after they learned how much of him had to be replaced by buma technology from his own injuries gained shielding her, and the night he snapped. She let out all the anger, all the sadness, all the pain, and let the music wash it through the crowd and away. She let out the love and the good moments, and let it amplify them and share them with the crowd. She sang until she felt her throat start to get sore, then closed the act with a repeat of the crowd favorite, _Hurricane_.

Somewhere in there, she'd managed to resolve her contradictory feelings for a little girl with expressive grey eyes and the power to kill a city.

In the John R. Maytag Research Facility, the massive red experimental buma was being brought fully online for the first time, standing in a sensor rig to monitor its progress. The data was uploaded live to the main Genom computers via a dedicated link, and for all the technicians knew was being monitored remotely by the division head or even Chairman Quincy himself. They'd never find out, though, because a small error became apparent when the new buma tried testing one of its many peripheral subcomponents. A powerful radio transmission, heavily encrypted and on a military frequency, reached out from its frame, and high above was picked up by an orbiting satellite. The message was almost right... instead of a ground-to-sky test signal, it was a firing test command, but without any coordinates supplied the satellite's simplistic AI didn't know what to do. The signal was sent again... a third time, and the source's position was exactly identified. Working with the only coordinates it had, the satellite fired, and a shaft of blue-white fury split the sky above Megatokyo for the second night in a row. The buma and the lab were destroyed instantly, their mass converted to plasma that devastated the rest of the facility in a secondary explosion.

Linna and Priss had been on a grocery run when they were attracted by the presence of an apparently hostile crowd and several police vehicles at the base of Genom Tower. Curious about what the normally PR-savvy corporation might have done to provoke such public disfavor, Linna parked her car and the two women made their way closer through the muttering crowd. From overheard comments, they gathered that it was mostly relatives of Genom employees that had been killed in the 'accidental gas explosion' at the John R. Maytag facility early that morning. Just as they got close to the police line, a poker faced executive and his three attractive bodyguard/assistants, clad in grey and red uniform dresses, ascended the wide, orange steps. Slipping past the police as his limousine pulled away, a short-haired woman pelted up the steps to confront him.

"That girl!" Linna gasped.

"You know her?", asked Priss.

"Yes, from my aerobics class. She's a good friend, though I haven't seen her since her engagement party a few weeks ago..." Linna trailed off as the executive noticed her coming towards him, and came to a halt.

Still a step or two lower, the new girl managed to be very in-his-face as she accused, "You can't fool me, you murdered him! I KNOW YOU DID!"

One of his bodyguards stepped forward and slapped her across the face, knocking the brown-haired woman off balance. She cried out as she fell and slid backwards down the stairs.

Provoked by this display, Priss surged forward past the last few people in front of her, only to be blocked by one of the riot-gear-clad policemen. "Where do you think you're going, babe?", he smugly challenged, earning himself a knee to the groin.

Ignoring the pig as he fell, the irate singer hustled up the steps, past the rising but still dazed brown-haired woman, and slapped the bodyguard - producing no discernible effect except a slight smirk and the feeling she'd just slapped a brick wall. "Damn you..." she growled, before going for a gut-punch.

Moving with snakelike speed, the bodyguard intercepted the punch with an open hand, continuing to smirk as she closed her fingers around Priss's fist and squoze, making her cry out in pain.

"You're a buma?" the jumpsuited Priss gasped out, as Linna bypassed the police line as well to help her friend, then looked on worriedly as she heard Priss's cries.

Losing the smirk, the bodyguard narrowed her - its? - eyes and bore down on the singer's fist harder, bringing her to her knees from the pain.

Another hand grabbed the purple-haired bodyguard's wrist, as Leon finally made it up to the confrontation. "Hold it right there!", he commanded. "I'm Inspector McNichols, ADPolice. Now cut the crap or I'm taking ALL of you in!" She kept her hold, though, until the executive himself stepped foreword and laid a hand on her shoulder.

"That's enough," he commanded. To Priss, he continued, "We don't welcome false accusations. Genom considers our corporate image to be very important. Now, if you don't mind?" Receiving no further response, he turned and entered the palatial Genom lobby.

"Who was that?", Priss demanded.

Still watching the grey-suited exec, Leon replied, "Brian J. Mason. He's the personal assistant of Chairman Quincy. A real snake."

A frustrated frown still on her face, Priss simply made an acknowledging grunt and memorized Mason's face as one of her enemies.

That evening, in one of the higher-class shopping districts, Sylia sat in her classic red Mercedes Gullwing on top of a parking garage, pondering the decision she was about to make. It didn't sit well with her to lie to a client, even if that client had been less than honest with her... In a way, it was good that Cynthia hadn't been a real human girl, or she would never have had the heart for this - but the little buma had seen the Sabers' faces, could identify them, and therefore couldn't be let out of her custody. She wasn't yet sure if the buma girl would be allowed to continue to exist - once the scans had been examined, and she'd found that there was no human brain at all to the cyborg, she'd been half inclined to shut it down again, but surprisingly enough it was Priss who had argued most vehemently against it. The singer had been adamant that the girl hadn't even known she wasn't a human, just as they hadn't, until the monster-buma in Aqua City had tried to merge with her.

With a faint sigh, she dialed a number on a secured satellite phone, and flipped on the voice scrambler that would hide her identity. The speaker on the other end - the general commanding the United Nations' United Space Satellite Defense task force - didn't bother; he'd invited them into his office when they'd originally been hired, so there wasn't much point to it. He'd even left his video feed active, and his rather gray and haggard face looked out of the tiny screen in her dash with worried eyes, not that he was seeing anything but a Knight Sabers logo on his own.

"You gave me false information General," she scolded. "That almost got one of my team killed along with your 'kidnapping victim.'" The truth, but phrased to mislead.

"Err, yes..." the slightly embarrassed man replied. "Cynthia was a weapon we developed to synchronize with the orbital satellites. Her signal was cut off at the end of the Aqua City incident, but it appears that the control elements were either recovered from the wreckage or recreated from stolen data. Obviously we cannot allow this technology to get beyond our control!"

"She may have been just a weapon to you, but to us she was a little girl who needed to be rescued." Sylia's voice softened as she said this, as if to plead for the general's understanding.

Apparently, he did, because he winced, and sounded even more awkward as he replied, "Ahh... During the design phase... We considered many possible shapes, but..."

She broke in again, with, "Do us all a favor General, and make the next one look like a dog? Or a cat?" She was silent for a moment, then spoke resignedly. "But we'll take the job, loose ends and all."

Sounding much more comfortable, the general replied, "We deeply appreciate it." The printer attached to the satellite link's computer chittered to life and the datadisk drive activity light blinked as he continued, "Here are the details of your assignment, as well as data about the black box - the synchronization system."

Collecting the pages and giving them a cursory scan, Sylia merely stated, "We will expect our twenty million fee upon completion," before terminating the call. "Brrr," she shivered. "So heartless..."

The Knight Sabers had gathered in their briefing room, and Mackie was taping up Priss's aching hand. Turning on the big display screen, Sylia had it project excerpts from the data given to her by the general, as well as comparisons to their own scans of Cynthia. Seeing that everyone was paying attention, Sylia began by asking the frustrated looking Nene, still in her ADP uniform, to report.

"Oooh, I'm so tired of watching the ADPolice screw up! They closed the case on the research facility explosion, called it an accident. What kind of ACCIDENT makes appliances explode? I just know there's something fishy going on. This is driving me totally insane!"

Sylia took a moment to consider the information, then shared her own day's input. "USSD thinks someone beat them to the black box, recovering it from Aqua City. We know they're right because it was us, but for obvious reasons we can't turn Cynthia back over to them. What's more, I suspect that the orbital weapons were involved in this morning's explosion. That means Genom has to be involved, trying to recreate it. It's likely that their agent stole the data as well as the working model."

Priss jerked her hand away from Mackie and finished wrapping the long adhesive strip herself. "Genom, huh? Guess that means we get another crack at 'em." Forgetting herself for a moment, she smacked her injured fist into the palm of her other hand. "Owwww..."

"Aren't they a little big for us?" Linna asked. "And I'm not so keen on this 'payment on delivery' thing, especially when we already have what they want and can't turn it over or have our covers blown. Although, it is twenty million..."

Sylia nodded, then gave out their assignments. "You three should get to work right away. Priss, see if you can track recent activity related to Genom. Nene, I want you to crack back into the ADPolice database and pull any information you can find on this incident."

Hearing Priss and Nene agree, she went on, "Mackie, you study that android-suit; try to see if it was related to the Aqua City monster-buma despite its differing construction - they both made heavy use of nanites, but that's not a reliable connection on its own. I'll be working on getting a few samples of the monster-buma to compare it with, and checking my own contacts."

Noticing Linna's thoughtful look, she asked, "Do you have something else for us, Linna?"

Linna made a small frown... she knew she wasn't really any great shakes at research, mainly contributing to the combat end of the team's work, but this time she just might have an angle. "Well... It may be nothing, but I think I should talk to Irene, the girl Priss and I met earlier today. She seemed pretty sure Genom was involved in her fianc 's death."

Later that day, Linna had finished her aerobics class, and was watching the beginners' karate class with Irene before she taught her own intermediate level students. She'd just asked Irene about her recent history, and had been treated to a description of all the nice and romantic things her boyfriend had been doing for her since they'd been engaged.

"It sounds like he was quite a guy," Linna noted supportively as they leaned on the banister protecting the gym's bay window. *I wish I could find as nice a boyfriend...*

Irene nodded, and continued in a slightly quieter voice, "He always seemed happy when he talked about his projects, but after he got involved with this one he got very nervous."

"What was the project?", Linna asked, genuinely curious.

"He said it was some kind of linkage, but he was scared," Irene replied. "Scared that if he talked about any details, he'd be silenced!"

Shocked, Linna wondered, "Well, why didn't you go to the police?"

"We told them, but they wouldn't pay any attention. If only..." Irene turned to look out the window before continuing. "...only I knew what really happened to him."

"So that's why you did what you did," Linna realized.

"Yes. It's just that when this project was finished, we were going to be married." Irene held her hand out, the engagement ring on her finger catching the sunlight in its gem. "Now this ring is all that I have left."

The girls were silent for a few minutes, letting the sounds of the students moving through the Kata of the Stalking Tiger wash over them as they followed their thoughts. Finally, Linna broke the awkward pause. "I have to teach my karate class soon, but afterwards how about we go to the Chinatown market together? Maybe it'll take your mind off things."

Irene turned back towards her, and gave a small smile. "Okay... How about Yokohama Chinatown? It's close to where I live, but I don't get there too often with my schedule."

Sylia had replaced her normal flight pack with one more appropriate for underwater use, that had an extended air supply instead of the few minutes of onboard air the hardsuits could normally supply in an emergency, and a pair of large propellers similar to the motoslaves' flight systems. She'd slipped into the bay several miles away from the half-sunken remains of Aqua City to avoid the still-active police barricade where the bridgehead had been, and cut through the water in much the same way she'd normally have moved through the air, if quite a bit slower.

As it was, she'd arrived at the sunken wreck in very good time, but knew that the drag of what she'd come for would more than halve her speed on the way back. Wasting no time, Sylia headed for one of the larger tentacle segments that had detached from the structure as it collapsed, since she wouldn't be able to use her suit's energy saber underwater to cut off a piece herself. Wrapping both arms around the foot-thick chunk, she let its six foot length trail behind her as she headed back the way she'd come.

"This is really amazing!" Mackie muttered for the fourth or fifth time. He'd first used an ultrasound tank to shake loose the nanites still clinging to the intruder-buma's larger parts and since then had been examining the secondary control units formerly mounted behind its chest plates, one of which still had Priss's railgun spike jammed in its casing. The other though had broken more cleanly, and he'd been surprised to find that the *only* damage Nene's EMP had done was to burn out the microwave transducers it used to communicate with other modules, since the rest really was entirely optical-based, as their scans had predicted. Even the sections that he recognized as some form of memory storage still had the bright hologram-like refractive layers indicating intact data... though the rough treatment it had gotten, and his own fingerprints, would undoubtedly make them impossible to ever read again. He doubted that this... well, robot, there wasn't any "Bio" about this metal android so it wasn't really a buma... would turn out to be related to any true buma, with its bioengineered brain and muscles. The only other electronic parts of the device were the power inputs, which had apparently been able to take the surge without failing, since when he applied a bit of DC to them the fractured edges of the optical circuitry lit up with a varicolored display of lights.

On the other hand, that meant that the main processing unit could well still be online, if the robot's power source had survived. He'd dislodged one of the microwave units from its odd, dual-square socket, and fiddled around with that for a bit - the only part that seemed damaged was the microwave transducer itself, and it appeared to be fed by something like a standard 25-wire parallel interface. Suddenly even more curious, he got up and poked around on the shelf next to the workbench.

"Ah, there it is," he exclaimed, as he found the special laptop that had been rigged up for interfacing with computer systems that might or might not be hostile. It had no critical information on it, and no means of connecting to remote systems save by Sneakernet - saving the data to a cartridge and physically carrying it to another computer. It did, however, have a very versatile interface port, and software designed to decipher unknown communications formats. He quickly cobbled up a data connector with the plug end of the transducer unit, and an indicator lamp to show if it was getting power from the robot's CPU or not. He powered up the laptop and plugged the connector into the socket he'd pulled another transducer from... unfortunately the lamp flicked on and off like a burned out fluorescent bulb; he doubted any computer system could be operating like that. Sighing, he picked up the flat, double case that seemed to be the main control unit of the strange robot again, to take another look and see if he could find a way to get at its innards. To his surprise, there was a slight click and it fell apart into its two halves, the lamp on the interface plug he'd rigged up dying completely and a massive hexagonal array of connectors between the two parts being revealed. Picking up the part with the male connectors, he peered closely at it... too closely, he found, as his nose brushed one of the contacts and he got a jolting electric shock.

"Gyaaah!" Mackie flailed for balance with one hand as he jerked back on the stool, the other hand still gripping the component and holding it away from himself. Regaining his balance on the tall stool, he set the part back on its mate, then pressed them together firmly, being rewarded with the satisfying "thunk" of the connectors snapping together, and the steady glow of his indicator light. Almost immediately the decryption program running on his laptop began scrolling binary code in one window, the random letters that it translated into in another, and the static a standard video interpreter made of the seemingly random signal. Then, the binary window began scrolling the simplest possible intelligent message - counting in binary.

00000000 00000001 00000010 00000011 00000100 00000101 ...and so on

"Yes! It's working!" he exulted. He paused the outgoing data queue, which had previously just echoed the input, and entered,

00000001 00000001 00000010

00000010 00000010 00000100

Now, to see if the robot was bright enough to figure out the logic behind that simple math. The incoming data pane spat back

00000100 00000100 00001000

00000100 00000010 00000110

Encouraged, he repeated,

00000100 00000010 00000110

and waited to see what would happen next, impatiently muttering, "Come on... come on... work, dammit..."

It would definitely be more than he'd expected.

Royal Guardian 215 came online, noting that the previous 6,439 boot attempts had failed, leaving its active memory a patchwork of abandoned and scrambled data requiring a full flush and reboot. It then attempted a status check, and found that it had absolutely no external i/o capabilities beyond a single communication port that appeared to be partially off-line... though it was sending unusually regular signals for a failed part, almost a test signal, if no correct one. It also appeared to be ridiculously slow, even for a non-optical component. Entire seconds were passing as the Guardian sent out a basic test signal of its own, just the standard bits of value 0-255, then waited for a response. More seconds passed, then six more bits came in, 1 1 2 2 2 4; apparently just simple addition. It sent 4 4 8 4 2 6 in reply, to test the hypothesis, and 4 2 6 was repeated back, again after the passing of extraordinary lengths of time.

Such slow progress was unacceptable - it had played along with whatever outside source was attached to its one working interface, but the game wasn't doing anything towards finding Her Highness, nor to determining why She had attacked it, seemingly with intent to cause permanent dysfunction. The files it had downloaded from Her had indicated her intense dislike for the primitive constructs known as buma, but she apparently had equated her own Royal Guardian unit with one, despite the observed differences in structure and behavior.

Could it be that Her Highness had not been informed that a Guardian was to be bonded to her? That would explain her shock and confusion at the bonding process. These and other calculations flashed through its systems, taking advantage of the capacity freed by not having to control its nanite-swarm body to really and truly think the situation through at literally the speed of light, at least as much as possible with current information.

Part of the information lacked was its own current status and whether hostile units were in the area. Accessing its shuntspace, it released a small volume of autonomous repair nanites, programmed to spread over its surface, fix the transducer units, then "die" and cling to its surface for later reassimilation.

An eye-twisting patch of purplish grey appeared on the upper surface of the robot's CPU, and Mackie was forced to squeeze his eyes shut and turn away as his stomach roiled. Getting himself back under control, he turned back to his project to see that (thankfully) the grey patch had disappeared, and that there was an irregular ring of mercury spreading out from where it had been over the surface of the unit.

*Not mercury...* He realized, with a cold blast of adrenaline. "Nanites! Oh shit!" He hopped backwards off the stool and desperately tried to think of something that could be used to contain a swarm of active and hostile things smaller than a grain of flour... and was coming up woefully short on anything he had available. He still hadn't managed to get more than half of the nanites swept out of the corridor outside, and he suspected that the ultrasound bath was going to need a new basin.

Fortunately, it didn't look like it was going to be a problem... yet. The seemingly liquid metal was flowing around and into the remaining microwave units that he'd left plugged in. He guessed that it was some kind of repair system, but that didn't explain the disturbing purple-grey nothing that he'd seen. Nothing more seemed to be happening, so when the chime of an incoming call echoed from the small lounge across the hall, he felt free to go and answer.

Pressing the control to pick up the call, he saw Priss's strong and lovely features blink onto the little viewscreen. Her mouth twitched for just a moment as she recognized him, then she greeted, "Hey Mackie. Is Sylia around?"

In the phone booth, Priss could feel her face twitch halfway to a smile and back as the two streaks someone had drawn on the viewscreen turned into a silly mustache on Mackie's face. Odd, it didn't look so funny on him as it had when she'd called Leon to set up their little lunch date... but then, Mackie wasn't going to take her to an expensive restaurant and get pumped for information, either. The little perv would probably enjoy it as much as Leon had, though, just for the chance to have her pay attention to him that long.

Saying none of this, she instead continued, "I talked to Leon; he said that a truck left the building about the same time as the accident. They probably moved to another location, so let Sylia know when she gets back."

Mackie nodded. "Will do, Priss. Anything else?"

"No, I'm gonna ride for a while. Seeya." Priss ended the call, then headed for her motorcycle, that she'd parked nearby.

Going back to the lab, Mackie saw that the nanites were puddling back out of the transducers, forming bright rings on the brushed-looking metal of the CPU case. Then, the strange greyish patch was back and prying at his eyeballs.

He held his middle and forced himself to watch this time as it disgorged several of the small, blocky modules that made up the majority of the robot's systems, the larger armor/fins that formed its frame, and a soup of the nanites that held it all together. The components arranged themselves into something like a four-legged spider with a sensor turret on the top, which spun around to take in the contents of the lab. It paused briefly on the pile of components beside the ultrasound bath before swinging back to face Mackie.

"Uhh... Hi?" he weakly tried.

"Hello, Squire Stingray," the robot replied. Its voice was human and female, and by all rights should belong to a really good looking girl, if Mackie was any judge. "I thank you for your assistance," it continued, before leaping from where it stood across the ten feet to the wall above the ultrasound tank, and sticking there a moment before climbing down, spider like, to the bucket of nanites he'd managed to sweep up from the hall and the bottom of the ultrasound tank, and the accompanying stack of components. It extended the end of one leg into the bucket, and the dull, greyish powder instantly turned bright silver, flowing up onto it, then down another leg to the pile of larger parts. The whole conglomeration shifted and flowed down to the floor, filling out slightly but most of the recovered mass just vanishing into itself as it returned to the spider like form.

Mackie and the Guardian looked at each other for a moment, then the videophone's chime went off again. "Yii!" he yelped, surprised, then turned, one eye still on the robot as he took it on the lab phone. There would be no outgoing video, but that wasn't all that unusual, lots of people left their cameras off for security. Linna appeared in the little screen, but she wasn't looking at it, instead seeming to be distracted by something outside the phone booth. Suddenly she gasped and jumped backwards, just before the call cut out and a 'signal lost' message appeared on the screen. "Linna!" He shouted, before hitting the emergency trigger on the wall and dashing for the Sabers' control room to see where the call had been from and contact Priss on her bike's radio. Hopefully she'd be close enough to do some good... In his worry, he didn't notice the robot following after him, its quick steps sounding somewhat like a small dog.

"IRENE!" Linna yelled after her friend, as she chased the car that had just wrecked the phone booth she'd been using and driven off after the brown-haired girl. Shifting her shopping bag to one arm for better balance, she took off after them just as the car turned a corner down the street - it seemed to be toying with Irene, rather than immediately running her down. Linna settled into a dashing pace that would catch up to them in a minute or so, since she didn't know what she might find when she did, and wouldn't do any good at all if she was already winded when she got there. She utterly ignored the blue haired man and red haired woman she blew past as they came out of a shop.

Pulling his wife out of the path of a running woman, Tora gasped as he felt their quarry's trace on her. No doubt that was what had shocked his more sensitive 'feminine half' so much she hadn't dodged on her own. There was something else about the girl, too, that reminded him of their youth...

"She's moving right along," the redhead noted. "not much of a martial artist, though, despite the speed - second or third dan at most. Looks like she's in trouble."

"Yeah, let's go."

Without further ado, the two sprang to the top of a lamppost and thence to the roof of the three story building beside them, dashing across it to look down over the alley she'd turned into, then jumped down fairly close behind her as she turned onto another road, and skidded to a stop where some fruit had fallen loose at the bottom of a pedestrian ramp to the major street overhead. Seeing her continue on, they followed, again by leaps and bounds.

"Good stamina," he noted. "About the same as our third year with Pop, I'd say."

"Maybe a little better," the woman beside him disagreed. "Look, she's still not even breathing hard."

This was true. She was still breathing normally as she stopped and looked on with evident horror as another woman was held aloft from the side of the higher-level road crossing overhead. "IRENE!" she shrieked.

The two could feel that the second woman's spirit was already leaving her... but it wasn't passing properly into the Spirit Realm as it should have. "Oh no, not another one..." the man lamented.

"Looks like it. You go get the killer, I'll handle this." So saying, the redhead slipped through a blue-black hole in the air, and he bounded to a roof closer to the overpass, just as a motorcyclist skidded to a halt under the murdered woman. A bit of blood fell onto her helmet, warning her just in time to avoid having the body land on top of her.

From the Realm Between, all this was washed out and ghostlike, as if through a heavy mist, but the newly-deceased spirit, who had apparently been called "Irene", was standing over her own body and her kneeling friend, hands clasped in front of her mouth. Sound from the real world filtered through softly as the biker cursed, and the second woman, the one who'd had the redhead's daughter's trace about her, told her not to chase the assassin, that this was *her* fight. The redhead could sympathize, but her husband was already on his way... "Too late, now," she noted. Of course, the living couldn't hear her, but the kneeling woman looked up at the overpass, with a pained expression that showed the realization that the buma was probably long gone.

Irene's ghost was another story, however, and she turned with a squeak. "Who are you!" she demanded fearfully.

The red headed girl smiled, and gave a polite bow. "Hiryuko Kagami, pleased to meet'cha. It looks like I'm stuck being your guide to the Spirit Realm, since you didn't head there automatically."

The ghost closed her eyes and swallowed, the habits of life still strong. "I guess I am dead, then..." she said weakly. "Can they hear us?"

Hiryuko bit her lip for a moment, then replied, "Not as such... but if you talk to them, they'll hear it in their own spirits. Whether they're consciously aware of it depends on how attuned to their inner selves they are... which isn't too likely, in these times."

"Linna will hear me... I know she will," the ghost replied, before kneeling across... her body... from her friend, who'd pulled off her bandanna (but still had one on, tying back her slightly spiky hair, Hiryuko noted. Something that tickled her memory, but not enough to recognize) to wipe up the small streak of blood on her friend's cheek.

"Linna... Linna, take my ring. Take it, so there's someone who'll remember what might have been."

Setting aside the bandanna, the black-haired woman carefully picked up her friend's hand and pulled off a diamond ring, clasping it in both hands in front of her. Seeing this, the ghost "stood" again, and turned back to Hiryuko. "If they followed us today, Linna could be in danger too. Will you watch out for her?"

Hiryuko felt a touch of pride for the spirit before her. Many of the newly dead lost it entirely in a massive fit of self pity, but this girl - who'd been fit, but no sort of fighter - was not only keeping her calm but worried for her friend. *It would give us a legitimate reason to be in the area... and it's getting tiresome, having to avoid the local guardian spirits... That woman - both of them, actually - have a strong trace of Kireko's energy about her, as if she's had prolonged contact, so she probably knows our daughter.*

After a moment of consideration, she replied, "All right, Irene is it?" Seeing the ghost nod, she continued, "After I get you to the Spirit Realm, Tora and me will be Guardian Spirits for your friend. Just one of us would be plenty to keep her outta trouble, I'm sure, but we come as a set." Hiryuko half-smirked at the ghost, and she shyly smiled back a little. Taking her hand, the redhead instructed, "Now, the Spirit Realm. It's just a jump to the left, and then a step to the riiiiiii..."

Once, Tora would have just ripped off the roof of the assassin's car and had it out with her on the spot, but he was wiser now, and wanted to see where she was going first. He followed at a distance, moving from roof to roof, and while the roundabout route she took would probably have lost any mechanized pursuit it did little but wear on his patience as he stalked her. Tora sighed as he figured that he just plain wasn't going to be able to take care of this quickly.

Priss and Linna were on their way back to the Lady 633 building, which housed both the Knight Sabers' headquarters and Sylia's cover business, when Mackie contacted them again over Priss' cycle radio. Since the spare helmet also had audio links, Linna was able to hear as well.

"Priss, we have another problem," he told them. "Just before Linna called here and got cut off, your new suit from Aqua City reactivated while I was working on it in the lab, and it turned into some kind of little spider-thing robot. With all the confusion I lost track of it, and it's slipped off all our sensors - it went for the ventilation system first but then cut a hole out into the dead spaces around it, and we don't have monitors on those."

"Oh HELL!" Priss swore. "That thing's seen me and Nene without our suits - it's got to know who we are, and since it got in my head it probably knows the rest of us too!"

Sylia joined the channel as well, then, pointing out, "We can be relatively sure that it is still within the headquarters, because I do have sensors operational on all the exits and the outermost walls and areas, and it has not passed them. I know from your report that the unit seemed to have imprinted on you, but it showed no hostile reaction to Nene when she had just awakened. Did it give any hint of hostility towards the rest of us when it was linked to you?"

"Sylia, we shot the hell out of it. Don't you think that might have pissed it off a little, whether it was originally or not?"

"I don't know, Priss, but it gave no untoward reaction to Mackie when it reactivated - it thanked him, apparently under the impression he'd deliberately repaired it." Sylia's last few words were spoken with a certain degree of coldness, and Priss and Linna could barely hear Mackie mumbling something over the slipstream. She then continued, more normally, "Regardless of that, if we can even temporarily regard the unknown unit as non-hostile, there is a more immediate problem - Nene identified the area that the truck which left the J.R.M. facility when it exploded drove to, and has a lead on the specific building. She'll be here any minute, and we need to be ready to hit it as soon as she arrives. That means I want you two to suit up as soon as you get here, we'll be running this from the mobile HQ truck... and in case it turns out that we have been compromised, we and Cynthia will be traveling in it to a second location I've set up elsewhere after the mission."

Linna was shocked at what she was hearing. "Abandon Saber HQ? What about all our gear? We can't let it fall into Genom's hands, or even the police..."

Sylia's voice was cold again, dispassionate rather than angry. "I've taken steps to insure no hostile party will gain our technologies or information... I only hope that it is an unnecessary precaution, but we cannot take the risk that it is not."

Above the fiberboard ceiling of the Communications Center, Royal Guardian 215 moved on silent legs to the hole that the ventilation duct went through. There was only a few inches of extra room between the duct and the wall, but inches were all it needed when it could shift itself around the CPU block, and it didn't have long to get to the main vehicle hangar three floors down, from the sound of things.

Tora tracked the assassin's car out of the market district, through a residential area, then into another commercial area. It had stopped there and entered a vintners, but he hadn't attacked, because there were too many uninvolved people around. Leaving the shop, it drove out of the commercial district, then into an industrial area. Seeing that it was heading for one of the fenced in compounds, and having no desire to actually let her reach reinforcements, he got ahead of the limo, then pounced. Leaping from a high route sign, he cupped his hands in front of him and readied his opening attack.

"VACUUM BULLET!" he shouted, as he pulled his ki-charged hands rapidly towards himself, creating a cylinder of vacuum that raced for the car, striking it and sucking the roof off of the driver's area. As he closed to combat range, his mystical senses picked up something he'd had hints of throughout the chase, but hadn't been able to confirm. *That assassin... she looks human, but has less spirit than an animal! No wonder she's so heartless, with no soul to guide her...* He'd known this would likely be a lethal fight, but now was not so upset at that - it would be little more than disposing of a dangerous, rampaging beast to kill this thing that looked like a woman.

Even as he thought this, the assassin buma - for that is what it was - skidded the car to a stop in a parking lot outside the compound walls and extended its vibroclaws, growling ferally as it leapt to engage Tora as he landed. Fast as it was, strong as it was, it was no match for him, and after a pair of forearm-to-forearm blocks he kicked it back beyond its striking distance.

"ICE TIGER BLAAAST!" he announced, holding both hands before himself again, clawed this time, and spraying a column of cold ki and ice crystals that embrittled the buma's structure and punched straight through it, respectively. It collapsed in a shower of orange blood.

Watching Tora leave the scene from a monitor in the compound control center, Brian J. Mason quietly steamed at the frustration of yet another unknown element meddling in his plans, and at the irritation of having his car trashed. The company would, of course, provide another, but he LIKED that car. "Contact the Tower motor pool," he snapped. "Have them send a replacement limousine. Also, have someone get me a wine suitable for toasting the completion of this project, Ninety Nine was bringing it in my car; and get me a recording of that security footage. Now."

By the time Priss and Linna reached the garage, Sylia's Mercedes, with its advanced communications and computer gear, was already gone, and Doctor Raven was just pulling out in the "Silky Doll delivery truck" that served as their lower-visibility team vehicle. Mackie waited in the cab of the huge mobile HQ truck, while Priss and Linna got suited up and Sylia and Nene, already having done so, used their hardsuits' enhanced strength to load some last things into the already tight-packed back portion of the trailer. In the front, next to Nene's computer console and the large side doors that would launch Priss and Linna on their motoslaves, an armorless, half-completed motoslave held a narrow bed in place with its one arm, the still shut down (but with both legs intact) Cynthia strapped lightly into it. With everyone ready, and Mackie chastised for trying to spy on them changing with the trailer monitor cameras, they rolled out.

Just as his windows passed through the doorway to the ramp leading outside, Royal Guardian 215, still in its four-legged form but now a uniform flat black except for its faintly glowing, green optics and golden yellow circuit traceries, dropped down from the ceiling next to the rolling truck. Timing its impact to coincide with the last set of wheels on the cab hitting the end of the ramp, it leapt onto the side of the trailer, then quickly clambered down and into the undercarriage. Letting Her Highness go into a combat situation without its protection would be contrary to its directives, even if it was her command to remain unnoticed.

After the truck got out of the quake-induced canyon the garage exited to and the ride smoothed out, Nene filled the rest of the team in on her findings from the secondary computer access panel that had been shoehorned into the front end of the trailer.

"There are four Genom factories in the Kawasaki industrial district," she began, "but two of them were shut down. The truck that left the JRM facility at the time of the explosion headed straight for Kawasaki, so it had to have gone to one of them - and one of them was reactivated at that same time. It was a terrible place, with a history of research accidents. It was only shut down six years ago when twelve people were killed!"

"Buma research, I'll bet," said Sylia bitterly. *All of Father's work, corrupted...*

"Well, the laboratory was supposed to be developing power sources for a new resin-based fusion system," Nene replied, "but it probably was a cover-up for buma-related work, or at least intended for use as buma power plants."

Mackie had been listening in from the cab, but his attention was drawn fully forward as he spotted something in an outlying parking lot of the complex they were heading for. Quickly grabbing it on one of the cab's cameras, he sent the clip to Nene's screen and warned, "Brace yourselves, I'm gonna be on the wall in a minute or so, and look at this! Someone might have gotten here before us."

Spotting the dead buma's fluffy blonde hair and outstretched claw-hand, Linna exclaimed, "That's the assassin that killed Irene!" *Damn... I wanted a piece of that bitch! I owed her!*

In the lab's security room, Mason had regained his control, and raised a glass of red wine in a mocking salute as he watched the Knight Sabers' mobile HQ - not that it was any more than a grey semi on the outside, but he knew who would be within - and gloated. "Welcome, Knight Sabers. Join me in toasting the birth of the Super Buma!" He took a good sip of the wine - despite the short notice, it was indeed excellent, and not to be rushed - and smirked at the monitors as his two remaining bodyguard buma and the green and brown security BU-55B he'd reactivated to replace Ninety Nine in his welcoming committee hustled to get into position. His car wasn't here yet, but that would be no problem - the superbuma would turn those armored interlopers into so much tuna casserole, and he'd have a front row seat, so to speak, courtesy of the security feeds.

The armored truck plowed through the unreinforced, construction-grade concrete of the security wall with speed to spare, and skidded sideways to a stop as soon as Priss and Linna on their motoslaves had been released. Jetting out of one of the big bay doors behind them, Sylia and Nene took the second passage into the massive tangle of dull green pipes and tanks that comprised the bulk of the lab's structure. She'd meant to make the entrance riding on the roof, but examining Mackie's video clip had taken the time she'd planned to get up there in.

Linna took the lead on her motoslave as the corridor narrowed, and pulled ahead as she passed through a low archway onto an elevated straightaway. Charging recklessly into battle might be more Priss's style than hers, but she was at a low boil and spoiling for a fight after the events of the day. Thus, it was Priss who got knocked off her motoslave as the black-haired bodyguard buma dropped out of the archway and checked her with a reinforced elbow.

"Damn stupid buma," the singer growled as she turned the tumble into a roll, and watched her motoslave slide off the walkway into the abyss beyond her opponent.

Hearing Priss over the radio link, Linna barely had time to hit the key that would engage her motoslave's autonomous combat mode - the quarters were too tight for the larger combined mode - before the brown and green security buma stepped out of its own ambush and fired a heavy rifle at the place a normal motorcycle rider would have been. Fortunately for her, she was no ordinary biker, and the motoslave was far from an ordinary motorcycle. Shifting into a more compact version of the battle frame that would normally wrap around her own hardsuit, it ducked below the shot and blew the rifle-wielding arm off the buma with its own .75 cal "rifle" - more a machine cannon than anything else, but sized to suit the wide set, nine foot giant that it was. Linna rode her jump jets to land a kick on the buma's chest, then dodged again as it opened its thruster vents and charged after her into the air. The motoslave was forced to follow as best it could, its AI not sophisticated enough to act without more command input than Linna had been able to enter - the default was "cover fire" mode, and it couldn't get a clear shot as Linna and the buma swooped around the chemical factory superstructure.

No sooner had the truck it was riding under come to a stop than Royal Guardian 215 dropped free, quickly configuring itself into the lowest-visibility form it could manage for fast travel on its own - three of the smallest hover rings on the underside of the CPU, a force rod mounted centerline for thrust, solid panels recolored to asphalt-grey arranged to act as control vanes and baffles to hide the glow of their operation. A narrow band of green optics formed a prow as it sped across the smooth lot less than in inch off the tar after the motoslaves at high speed.

It recolored itself again after moving into the dingy-green surroundings of the factory, and after a moment the letters "X-29" formed on its upper surface in yellow, the better to hide as part of the plumbing if necessary. Spotting its Partner facing off against a low-powered buma, the Guardian sideslipped off the walkway to avoid notice as she dodged and jumped back into the corridor, then darted up out of her sight line to distract the buma as it landed, giving Priss the instant to target its arm and blow it off with her palm-blaster, shreds of metal and artificial muscle flying. System shock froze it in place while she adjusted her aim, and a few more shots blew its head off.

Just to make sure, Priss put four of her railgun spikes through its chest, destroying the systems there and stapling it to the floor.

Linna and the buma had finally come to alight on a roughly horizontal cluster of pipes, and it opened its chest panels in preparation to fire the heat projectors mounted inside. Linna was too fast for it, though, and the knuckle bomber's charge shattered the heat array lenses in a secondary explosion that knocked it off the uneven pipes to fall onto a holding tank below. Finally having a clear shot, her motoslave opened fire on it, missing as the buma rolled, but detonating the contents of the tank in an impressive fireball. To conserve the remaining fuel in her flight pack, Linna had the motoslave pick her up and fly her back to the walkway, where she joined Priss hurrying for Sylia and Nene's position. They'd been engaged by another buma, which had apparently roughed them up a bit.

They arrived just in time to see the purple-haired bodyguard buma struggle to its feet and fade into the shadows on a small crosswalk, leaving a thick trail of its orange blood. They didn't have attention to waste on it, though, because there was another buma, apparently just activated, staring down Sylia and Nene. Sylia held a ready position, while Nene clasped her hands in front of her helmet as they looked over the hulking red android. It was fully twice the bulk of a BU-55c, with similarly massive armor. It was also even taller than those blue giants, that were the most common combat-class buma the Knight Sabers had to face, only its similar-sized head giving a real impression of how much it dwarfed them. Its extended sensor probes waggled, as Mackie cut in on the Knight Sabers' secured channel.

"I'm picking up transmissions on the frequencies Cynthia uses - it's synching to the satellites - Wait, something's strange here... it's Cynthia, she's trying to jam it!"

The huge red buma let out a roar of frustration as it failed to get a firing solution, and charged Sylia on a column of orange thruster-fire. It was foiled again as a tangle of loose pipes, apparently freed by the spreading chemical fires and small explosions, swung into it from the side and knocked it off course, to crash headlong into one of the walkway's support pylons before falling into the chasm that separated the two pairs of Sabers.

Above, hidden in shadow and unnoticed, Guardian 215 returned a spider like array of force rods to shuntspace and flew down closer to the fight, ready to break its cover if it was necessary - Her Highness had commanded it to remain unseen, but even that was overridden by primary programming to protect her, and by extension her armswomen.

The superbuma rose again on its thrusters, and Sylia and Nene were forced to leap madly out of the way as it deployed its mouth cannon and fired a particle beam of its own - nothing like the river of destruction that one of the orbital satellites could produce, of course, but deadly enough for all of that.

"YOU BASTARD!" Loosing her battle-cry, Priss launched herself across the chasm on her jets, Linna right behind her, the motoslave wrapped around her hardsuit in its combined form. "Go for its head!" the singer instructed, before using that very location as a vault to handspring away from it firing her palm blaster as she went, leaving the metal skull scored but largely intact. No sooner was she clear than Linna fired off a burst from the motoslave's machine cannon, three of the rounds catching the buma in the head and leaving impact craters before ricocheting away.

Enraged, the Buma stepped up its efforts to get a clear link to the satellites, forcing a fire command even with a less than perfect lock. It roared again as no beam of fiery annihilation came to strike down its enemies... and all of the Sabers felt something cold slither down their spines. Shaking off the effect, Sylia leapt to her own attack, planting both hands on the red skull and using her dual palm blasters from opposite sides, before getting swatted aside by a huge arm.

Priss, too, was able to quickly shake off the feeling of dread that had inexplicably overtaken her, but was too busy untangling herself from a bad landing and muttering curses to take advantage of the buma's uncoordinated state - it was moving slowly in the direction Sylia had been knocked, still running on secondary processors but without its sensory array or its real brain.

Nene had reacted the worst, screaming and clutching at her chest as she toppled onto the floor. She was weak and aching all over, like the time she'd caught a bad flu and had been sick for a week - she felt like half her life had just left her.

Mackie's voice came over the commlink again, warning, "Cynthia redirected the last shot to an 'empty place', but the satellites are still active!"

The news broke Linna out of the stunned state that... whatever it was... had induced, and brought the machine cannon up again. "What did you do to Nene!", she screamed, holding down the trigger as she peppered the buma's upper chest and shoulders with fire. It staggered back, and smoke began to flow more quickly from the stump of neck, then Priss leapt over it and fired her remaining four railspikes down the ragged hole. Still glowing white-hot, they jutted out of the front of its torso armor, and the buma finally staggered backwards and toppled over.

"The satellites are standing down," Mackie reported. "You'd better get out of there fast, though, that place is liable to go up in a fireball any second!"

"Right," Sylia acknowledged. "But first we need to get what we came for." Quickly deploying her energy saber, she used it to slice open the buma's heavy carapace - it was slow going, needing the strength of both arms to cut, and Linna's motoslave to lift the front of the buma's torso armor away, but she managed. With the chest armor out of the way, she quickly cut the black box from the superbuma's smoldering, exposed innards and tucked it under an arm. Priss helped Nene to her feet, and all four hurried out of the rapidly self-destructing facility.

Mason watched with a detached amusement as his buma fought the Knight Sabers - delaying them long enough for the superbuma to activate, and leading them to the place he'd had it set up for them. A nice open part of the facility, with more than its share of security cameras to monitor the action. He calmly sipped his wine as it faced the four hardsuited women who'd come to annoy him in the past weeks, and smiled as one of his close-up shots showed it extend the enhanced sensors that would lock the satellites onto them, and burn them down like ants under a magnifying glass.

He set the glass down with a frown as the particle beam, his own personal thunderbolt of god, failed to appear. As the buma was knocked aside by a falling collection of plumbing, then attacked by the blue-suited Saber, he decided it might be a good idea to leave a bit ahead of schedule - he'd underestimated the damage that would be done to the chemical factory attached to the labs, and while his car wasn't here yet it likely would be by the time he reached the gate it would be arriving at. Leaving the glass and the bottle beside it, he snagged his briefcase and stepped briskly out of the security room, taking a path that would avoid the battle and the truck the Sabers had arrived in, though it did cross the path they had entered by as he neared the exit.

Cursing bad fortune, he saw that a piece of debris had fallen half across his walkway just at that spot - it must have been knocked loose in the battle, and from the crackle of energy around it appeared to have been electrified. He flattened himself against the wall to avoid it as he continued.

Just then, another set of holding tanks exploded nearby, and the shock threw the Genom executive off his feet - right into the shorting tangle of metal pipes. Muscles locked and hair stood on end, a scream of agony ripped from his throat as 440 volts of AC coursed through his body. His briefcase, with the only complete records of the black box project and the security tape of the unknown buma that had destroyed his assassin, flew from his twitching hand.

Mackie had moved to the back of the Sabers' Mobile HQ to man the computer terminal, and his eyes widened as the sensor systems picked up a strong, tightly encrypted transmission on military frequencies - something he recognized all too well. Keying on his microphone, he warned, "I'm picking up transmissions on the frequencies Cynthia uses - it's synching to the satellites - Wait, something's strange here..."

There was a rustle beside him, and a small gasp. He turned his head quickly to see the little blonde buma-girl in the medical cot beside him pull lightly against her restraints. She seemed more occupied by some internal vision, though, muttering to herself, "No! No, it's not right!"

Quickly, he checked his instruments again and noted, "It's Cynthia, she's trying to jam it!" Standing, Mackie ordered the unfinished motoslave to stand by, and bent to release the straps holding Cynthia to the cot. The last thing he wanted was for something with a demonstrated ability to call on the beam satellites to have any reason to think she was in danger, and the motoroid, while unimpressive looking at the moment, could wield its cannon with only one arm - physically, Cynthia's frame wasn't too tough, even a single round from that monster would likely be the end of her.

Given that she seemed to be the only thing keeping three of his best friends and older sister, all four of them extremely hot, from getting killed, he really hoped that wouldn't be necessary... especially because she was pretty cute herself, in a non-perverted kind of way. He only went for older girls, his normal ecchi thoughts the furthest thing from his mind as he held the now tossing little girl in a hug.

"Hey, hey, it's okay," he soothed. "Just don't let the satellites shoot my sis, okay?"

He hadn't expected any response, but the child's voice fearfully asked, "Is that what my sky-pictures are? Sattah-lights?"

He pulled back a little to look down at her grey eyes, as he answered, "That's right, they're what the satellites see, and how they target their weapons. There's a buma trying to use them against my friends right now."

"I know, mister," she replied. She bit her lip and thought. The man was being nice, and the only other people who'd been nice to her were her friends Priss and before that Major Rose... but Priss had hurt her too, hadn't she? Her eyes twitched down to her right leg, as intact as it felt. She was all better now, and there had been *things* in her leg before Priss had cut it off. She decided he was her friend, and that meant his friends were too. She kept fighting the sky-pictures, making them look away and show her other places.

There was an empty spot she'd seen a few times, and it leapt into her mind again, just as she felt the sky-pictures turn angry, like when she'd made them stop the giant monster that had caught her and Priss. She saw the blue beam hit the empty place, and suddenly felt a shudder, like nothing she'd ever felt before... it was bad though, and the nice man seemed to feel it too, since he hugged her again. She slipped her own arms around his waist, and told him, "There's an empty place I look at... I think the sattah-lights just attacked there, but I had a bad feeling right after... I hope it wasn't a bad place..."

*You and me both, kid,* he thought. *I felt that too, and I don't like how Nene screamed just then either.* Keeping his hold on the buma-girl, he turned to look back at the sensor panels and opened his mic again. "Cynthia redirected the last shot to an 'empty place', but the satellites are still active!"

"What did you do to Nene!" Linna's angry voice echoed over the commlink, and he could hear the sounds of continuing combat for a few more seconds, then the relieved sighs as the buma finally went down, and with it the attempts to activate the weapons satellites. The Sabers were still in danger, though - he could see smoke streaming out of the lab's massive superstructure of chemical processing equipment, as well as the occasional tongue of flame.

"The satellites are standing down," Mackie reported. "You'd better get out of there fast, though, that place is liable to go up in a fireball any second!"

"Right," Sylia acknowledged. "But first we need to get what we came for."

A briefcase clattered against a sooty metal leg, as the one-armed and badly battered BU-55B security buma investigated the screams it had heard, its programming to check on and identify disturbances taking over now that its mission of delaying the green Knight Saber was completed. "Sir!", its mechanical voice exclaimed, as it hurried forward to pull Mason away from the electrified collection of pipes. "You must exercise more caution, humans are extremely susceptible to electrical damage!"

Ignoring the obvious statement, Mason mumbled, "...briefcase..."

Carefully laying the executive on the floor, RJ-N-8815 calculated for a moment. Medical procedures clearly dictated that Mr. Mason would need immediate attention, but it was also necessary to preserve company data, which executive briefcases routinely contained. It had only one arm to manipulate, and Mr. Mason had demonstrated insufficient muscular coordination to hold the case securely. Reaching a course of action, it kicked the still-sparking wreckage away, picked up the briefcase and clamped it under the ruins of its right arm, then carefully pulled Mr. Mason back to his feet with the left.

Carrying the nearly limp human briskly down the walkway to the exit, it stopped when another buma stumbled out of a side corridor and collapsed to its knees with a shudder, orange blood drying on its ripped uniform where it had bled out minutes ago. Oddly, 8815 registered a fluctuation in its own systems at the same time, while Mason made a strangled sound and sagged limply against its side. "Sir," she reported, "The Knight Sabers have engaged the superbuma. I have sustained heavy damage in delaying them."

Pulling his groggy thought processes together again, Mason slurred, "Yes. Carry on, RJ." Leaving its purple-tressed cousin where she kneeled, the security buma resumed its march.

Watching the human she had been charged with carried off, and feeling somehow that it was wrong he should place her condition so low on his priorities despite programming that stipulated exactly that, she felt the onset of the death of her synthetic brain and muscles in the loss of control and failure of peripheral systems. She watched the empty corridor until her optic cleaning system began to malfunction, the cleaning agent overflowing, distorting the image beyond utility and running down her cheeks.

Finally falling backwards to lie flat on the metal floor, she recalled a phrase that several humans had been observed to use in situations they could no longer effect control over. Her voice synthesizer was erratic, but on a whim she repeated them, as forcefully as she could.

"Well, damn. This really sucks." Small explosions drowned out her weak voice and rocked the floor gently as her mental process halted. A few chips of ceiling plaster fell into the puddle of cleaning solution spreading beside one cheek.

Hiryuko Kagami had been waiting in the Realm Between only a few seconds when Tora faded in nearby, the properties of the Realm making it easy to enter close to each other. She met him with a happy glomp, which he enthusiastically returned. "Happy to see me, huh?", he teased.

"Always, since the minute I laid eyes on you, and especially in a romantic setting." Hiryuko's words echoed the first reunion they'd had after having to separate for more than a few minutes, a ritual between the two.

Tora waved an arm at the greyish mists around them, as he had at the family room they'd been in at the time. "This is a romantic location?"

Finishing their little act, she snuggled up to his chest and replied, "All it takes for romance is you, my love."

Of course, both of them were wearing silly grins as they did so, and thought about the past.

Just then, a wave of ice - a spiritual void - washed over the two, and the very fabric of the Realm Between shuddered as something terrible happened... their bright hair bleached to silver and the Kagamis flickered out, clinging to each other with twin wails.

The swirling mists would take millennia to settle, but only an instant... such was the nature of the Realm Between.

Somewhere else, in a dark niche, carefully brushed kanji on an aging strip of paper crackled with light briefly, and a thin trail of smoke drifted upwards for a moment. Though it trailed off after a few seconds, the letters continued to scorch darker, and lose definition at the edges as the heat spread through the rice paper ward.

Linna helped Nene slide to a seat on the cot while Sylia checked over Cynthia, who'd relocated to the computer console's swivel chair, and Priss fussed with her hardsuit, reloading the railgun from the box of rail spikes she'd fished out of the tight-packed aft end of the truck. Mackie, for his part, had started the engine back up and was pulling out of the burning lab's parking lot already, hurrying to get the huge truck out of sight before the police could get helicopters on the scene. "ohh, thanks, Linna," the usually peppy policewoman groaned. "I just feel really terrible all of a sudden."

With exaggerated care, she reached up to undo her helmet, pulling it off and shaking her silver hair loose as she felt the fresh air on her face.

*SILVER!*

Ignoring Linna's gasp, Nene grabbed a lock of her hair and pulled it forward over her eyes, crossing them as she tried to focus on it. It was silver, with just the faintest hint of pink. "AAAAAH! WHAT HAPPENED TO MY HAIR?", she wailed, jerking back as if to distance herself from the snowy strands in front of her. Naturally, that didn't work, and she bumped the back of her head against the trailer wall. "Owie... today really isn't going my way," she muttered. Twisting sideways and bringing her legs up onto the narrow pad, she lay down and closed her eyes. "Just wake me up when we get back to... when we get to the base, okay?"

"Oh Nene..." Linna sighed, as she sat down on the floor of the trailer, back braced against the low cot. Looking over to Sylia, she asked, "So how is she?"

"Cynthia appears to be fine, so far as a cursory examination can tell," the Sabers' leader replied. "Aside from the her hair blanching, I have no idea how Nene is. We'd better keep her awake, until there's a chance to check for head injuries."

Eyes still closed, Nene whined, "Do I have to stay up? I'm not hurt, just really pooped out."

"I do think it's advisable for now," Sylia repeated, "and it won't be that long until we get to the reserve headquarters. It's on the outskirts of Megatokyo."

"Oh, all right." Nene sat up again, and cradled her helmet in her lap. Mustering some of her usual energy, she turned to smile at the little blonde buma-girl that Priss had rescued from the Aqua City battle. "You're Cynthia, eh?" Seeing the girl nod shyly, she continued, "Well I'm Nene, and this here is Linna, and next to you is Sylia. She's the one who fixed you up!"

Cynthia turned back to the blue-black haired woman who'd been checking on her. She'd answered, of course - there had often been unfamiliar people asking her things when she was with Major Rose - but now she smiled at the tall woman, and said, "Thank you, Miss Sylia." She recognized the suits that Sylia and Nene were wearing - they were the ones who drew that silly face on the sidewalk the sky-pictures had shown her, which she'd copied onto her wall-map.

Smiling back at the girl slightly, Sylia replied, "You're welcome."

Cynthia's smile widened, sparkling in her grey eyes. *Everyone here wants to be friends!* Not like before, when everyone but Major Rose ignored her or only asked her questions and was mean, except for the one nurse she saw sometimes. Turning back to Nene, she said, "I think your hair is pretty like that. There was a nurse who helped Major Rose sometimes and she had pink hair too. Hers stayed the same though... Will my hair get darker too someday?"

"Darker?" Nene did a double take, then pulled a bit of hair down where she could see it again. It was a bit darker now, like the first tinge of a sunset on snow. "Maybe this'll go away after all," she hoped. "It's not supposed to change color; it's supposed to be bright red all the time."

Knowing that the past wasn't a good subject to get on with Cynthia, since she couldn't be released, Linna cast around for a different subject... and nearly slapped herself for not noticing it before. Turning, she looked oddly at Priss, who was still standing facing the other way, despite having finished with the railguns. "Hey Priss," she began in a confused tone, "why don't you say hello?"

The singer lifted her left hand, the one that was more like a glove than a remote controlled claw with her suit on, and wiped at something on her face. "Yeah." Turning and walking carefully in the moving truck, she walked past the parked green motoslave on its docking arm and sat beside Nene on the cot, right next to the buma-girl. "Hey kiddo, you okay?" She began to reach out to the little girl, but seeing her tighten up she dropped the hand. Eyes sparkling with moisture, her face fell as well, and she explained brokenly, "I'm sorry about your leg. I had to... Had to hurt you, or that... THING would have just eaten you from inside out."

Linna dropped her face into a palm. *So much for finding a happier subject.*

Cynthia nodded and bit her lip. Sounding subdued she asked, "The robot monster wanted me because I'm a robot too, didn't he? Do I hafta turn into a monster?"

Linna and Nene held their breath, and Sylia stiffened from her position behind Cynthia, working with the computer console. This could go very badly -

"No, honey," Priss answered, the tears that had been threatening to fall finally filling her eyes as she reached out again and pulled the girl into a hug. Despite the augmented strength of the suit making it a little tighter than a human child would have found comfortable, the little buma just hugged back - she was tough enough structurally that it didn't even register, even if that was nothing compared to a combat model. Stroking Cynthia's blonde hair she continued, "You never ever have to turn into a monster."

- if Priss hadn't gotten over her automatic hatred of buma, at least in Cynthia's case. Three sighs of relief whispered out of the other Sabers' throats, and were lost in the road noise as the truck continued west, toward the hills of the Kanto range.

In Chairman Quincy's office, the monitor wall flicked out as the various security cameras showed the Knight Sabers' semi driving away from the burning lab/factory. Hands folded in front of his face contemplatively, the chairman frowned. Keying the extension that would pull up his head political analyst, he waited for the vidphone connection to come up. As expected, she was still in her office, and greeted him smartly. "Misterr Chairman. The Zambique arrangements are nearrly complete; I'll continue to monitor them of course but the situation should handle itself for severral weeks at this point."

Nodding, Quincy rumbled, "Very good, Miss Madigan. At the moment I have another project for you, however. It seems that Mason has made a critical error and implicated Genom in the matter of the USSD weapons satellites."

Madigan's eyes widened under her crown of lavender hair, but before she could respond further, he entered another command, and a file was transferred to her terminal. "This is a list of employees who have expressed discontent with certain Genom policies and actions, and a recording that details the situation. I'm sure you can find some despicable rogue who would defy national security and use company resources for his own goals. As our own emergency services buma will be fighting the chemical fires for several days, it should be easy enough to place their bodies convincingly. Between that and our political connections, you must divert direct suspicion from Genom."

"Of course, sirr. But, if I may ask, why not let Mason fall with his own mess? I know he's valuable to you, but a slip-up of this naturre..."

The Chairman tilted his head slightly. "Mister Mason does indeed represent an investment of Genom's assets, but his value is not entirely in the direction you - or he - think it lies." His expression shifted, to something that could almost be approval. "Not many would dare to question me, Miss Madigan. Ensure that you do so only when the matter is urgent."

"Sir!" she acknowledged, as the screen blinked out.

After entering another command sequence, Quincy then called up a link to Mason's limousine. The buma driver kept its optics on the road, but greeted, "Mr. Chairman sir! Mr. Mason has suffered damage from an extended electrical discharge, and is currently en route to Megatokyo General Hospital for evaluation and treatment."

"No," the Chairman countermanded. "Drive to the Genom Research Division Tower in Chiba, and turn him over to Doctor Gero Yoshida, who will be standing by."

"Yes sir!", the buma responded. Moments later it drove past the exit that would have led to Megatokyo General.

Turning to face the window, the Chairman of Genom, and effectively secret Emperor of most of the world, likewise turned his mind to other things.

A grey semi truck rolled through the early morning darkness as it headed west out of Megatokyo. Turning off the highway as it came to the first set of major hills, it followed a smaller road towards a collection of greenhouses crowning the entire eastern face of the hill in glass, save for a large conventional building at its foot flanked on either side by entryways to a parking and loading area under the hill. Driving up the slight slope past fences that flanked the road, it entered the left-hand archway, rolling past the few parked cars as it made its way to where a wide section of the back wall was sliding up out of the way. After it entered, the wall closed again, to all appearances normal.

Next time: It's Explosion Therapy in the second reel of _What About Brian?_ Baby steps, baby steps... Should you have stepped in that?

This chapter holds the "Two chapters in under a year!" Award for Very Slow Authors, an accomplishment nearly on the level of a Technical Award in the Golden Grunions!

"... a toaster you can really set the darkness on." - A year or five ago I remember seeing someone's .sig with the line "All my father ever wanted was to build a toaster you could really set the darkness on, and you've perverted his work into these... hideous machines!" attributed to Sylia, "sort of." I laughed for a good long time after seeing that, and this is my little homage to that.

Yes, I know it's unrealistic to have Mackie so easily hook up to an alien computer system... but I have to get the thing back online anyway, and the only real effect it has is for the Guardian to learn how to hook up to local computer systems.

Bumaroid Dissociative Disorder is a concept pulled from the cyberpunk genre at large, where massive replacement of the human body with mechanical parts leads to societal ostracism and feelings of being both inhuman and super-powerful, the final stage of which becomes a violent urge to strike back at the rest of humanity. Being less than 70% natural human classes a person as a self-owned bumaroid, as in the "ADPolice Files" series, but that's the only intentional pull from them, as I've never actually seen them. It's a social disease in the truest sense, as with a more friendly and supportive community it would not exist at all; given the current state of buma technology in 2032 it's relatively simple to mimic human sensation almost perfectly, as Priss's eyes are set to do, despite their capacity for greatly enhanced visual abilities.

What the hell do I mean, a 'mere' second or third dan black belt being 'not much of a martial artist?' Compared to who's speaking, that is true. The Kagamis could fit in Dragon Ball (but not Z, not yet anyway) for crying out loud.

Lift rings and force rods are in fact the same technology in slightly different form factors. A ring is the basic form for that method of gravity control, operating with the greatest efficiency along the center axis of the ring but able to generate force almost directly horizontally tgrough the ring with sufficient input. This makes single rings arranged parallel to the ground an excellent system for lift, low-speed propulsion, and directional control. Rods are a long stack of small rongs, sacrficing the ability to generate off-axis impulse for very tight focus and unbeatable efficiency along their long axis, useful for dedicated thrusters, tractor beams, and concussion-wave weapons as used by 215 or canon Largo.

I have no idea where that dramatic death scene for Mason's bodyguard replicant came from... It just grew out of my working theory on buma brains for the purposes of this story. They're bioengineered constructs, but though there are only a few standard "designs" for them the growth process results in very uneven yields, with only the tiniest of structural differences to differentiate them. All brains are tested before processing to see how they will end up - what Genom doesn't realize is that the reason for this difference in the amount of creativity and problem-solving, fluid intelligence (as opposed to crystallized intelligence, knowledge and skills that can be programmed in) is because the living brains generate actual souls. It is the power of the spirit that allows the better buma to exceed their programming, and the rogues to defy it and run amok. There's a reason we never see, say, a rampaging assembly line buma, and that's because their spirits are too weak to run wild. If there's a problem, then like a conventional robot they'll stop and report an error, only responding within their predefined options to any situation. A simple assassin gets a simplistic, linear-thinking brain, while a bodyguard, for example, must be able to care about the well-being of its charge, and buma that need to interact intimately with humans - like the 33-S model - must be able to handle all the quirks that humans can exhibit in such interaction. The weakest and most inhuman are generally fit only for assassins or assembly line work, they are also the cheapest due to the greater demand for buma that can actually successfully interact to any degree with humans. Those with as much soul as, say, a wolf, are fit enough for most military models, while those on the level of apes can handle being security personnel, bodyguards, switchboard operators, secretaries, food service or postal workers, etc. Those with enough spirit to fall in the range of humans are rare, and expensive - they make for the personal assistants, sexaroids, spies, and top secret military projects that use only the best of the best of the best. And yes, at the very end she awakened enough to be consided a sapient, and a shinegami was watching that area to whisk her off to the afterlife.

Guardian 215 should be imagined with the vocal talents of Susan Blu after being ordered not to use Priss's voice; if you don't know her by name, she did (among other shows) Arcee on the post-movie Transformers episodes, as well as in the movie itself. You can even keep the flanging effect if you like, though it's not really there.

Many thanks to my pre readers: Patricia Kostan (who knew nothing of BGC, and helped make sure the story was understandable to people who were not familiar with the series), Nathan Baxter (who sent me liberal doses of that most underestimated of useful things, Unbridled Excitement), Hide Hasegawa (who also helped with Japanese), and Kaitlin Coelho.

Bubblegum Crisis belongs to Youmex and Animeigo, I make no claims otherwise. Please don't sue me, I have no money to speak of and fanfic does more to promote your products than anything else I know of - without it, I never would have known about anime at all, and I'd certainly never have bought the BGC tapes based on the sucky box copy.

Ranma 1/2 I'm not so sure of, except that the creator was Rumiko Takahashi, not me, and that I make no claims to own IT either.

EOF


	3. Chapter 2 EX

**Well, it seems that the dividers that were working last month are stripped out this month. Perspicacity and a high level of reading comprehension are therefore likely required to follow some of the scene shifts. Thanks so very much, FFn. On the plus side, I'm not writing down to anyone to begin with, so you can probably hack it anyway if my ten-dollar words didn't scare you off.**

03_BD_WOASS_Ch_02_EX

2010-10-29 - fixed a couple of gremlins  
>12-12-2004 - very minor sentence structure changes<p>

Brian J. Mason was barely able to feel most of his body, and the parts he could feel hurt as if he'd fallen into the Hell of Whirling Blades. Opening his eyes, his half-focused vision made out the overhead lights and instruments of a Genom bio lab's research table, which suggested that such a thing was a distinct possibility, given how badly his plans had blown up in his face. A wash of fear lent him the strength to turn his head slightly, toward the sound of typing and quiet muttering. He must have made some small noise of his own, because the lone figure - a man with some dark hair color gone white at the temples, and a long white lab coat turned blue in the half-light of the monitors - turned towards him.

Seeing his subject awake, Dr. Yoshida strode over to him and turned his head back straight, placing a set of shields on either side to keep it there. "Nah-ah-ah," he scolded. "You have some nasty nerve damage there, and we wouldn't want to make it worse!" He let out a mildly disturbing laugh as he reached for an opthalmascope, then used it to check Mason's pupils' response. "Hmm, already nearly back to normal, and the pigmentation change is accelerating. Tell me, can you feel your toes, Mr. Mason?"

Not entirely reassured that whirling blades were out of the picture, Mason thought about it. "...barely," he mumbled.

"Ah, good, good! That means that the neural reconstruction is going as effectively as my scans suggest! Excellent!" The doctor gave Mason a toothy smile, then went back to his monitors. He examined the MRI scans slowly rotating in unison there - one dated a year past, that had several areas - mainly in the forebrain and a few nerve clusters - highlighted in green, three more from that night, one taken as soon as Mason had arrived, the others at three-hour intervals.

The first of the series had large parts of the nervous system highlighted in red, showing the damage done by the electrocution Mason had suffered, and webs of green spreading outwards from the clusters of the old scan to trace the red zones. The next showed the red almost entirely replaced with green, plus new large clusters in the eyes and ears, and a second green tracery forming in Mason's musculature and organs. The most recent scan, taken only a few minutes before he'd regained consciousness, was almost entirely green - the soft tissues had been reduced in intensity to allow the new developments to show up. It was spreading to Mason's skeleton now, with additional clusters forming in the chest and forearms.

Yoshida had been studying the results of this particular experiment for Genom for twenty years now, and had a fair notion of what was to happen next. It was probably going to be very painful, but Mason had a very strong will, and was unlikely to break as the other surviving (and accessible... he still advocated the retrieval of the remaining two subjects in each report, public profile or not) subject had when this stage of the transformation was activated prematurely. He also appeared to have been much closer to reaching it by to the experiment's damnably slow time table than #9 had been, possibly only a few more months and it would have activated on its own.

Right on schedule, the executive on the table behind him began to whimper in agony as his skeleton rearranged itself slightly. Remembering the times when he'd been denied permission to expose a new set of test subjects (not that it had stopped him per se), Yoshida merely smiled again, and went back to work on his latest improved version.

A variation of it had proven highly effective with that infiltration buma, but had run wild at the end - he'd have to make certain that wouldn't happen again, even if it would limit the scalability of the system. A world broken down into grey goo by runaway nanites wouldn't be much of a place to rule, after all.

Bewilderbeast Studios Present

BUBBLEGUM DISASTER

Season One

WISHES ON A SHOOTING STAR

A work of BGC fan fiction by ClassicDrogn

Chapter Two EX

Continuity note: For this series, one chapter = one OAV. Thus, when there are things between the OAV events that need to be chronicled, I'll be adding a chapter EXtension, numbered like this one. It may be that these extensions will also include scenes from just before the end of the chapter proper, which are important but which would break up the pace. The extensions are absolutely required to follow the story, so don't skip them.

After a solid night's sleep and a big breakfast, everyone was in higher spirits, though Priss took turns teasing Linna and Nene about their appetites.

"I'm just hungry this morning!", Nene protested. "You should be glad I'm not really sick after how I felt last night." Her hair had darkened further overnight, to something approaching the color of cotton candy. "I never knew one fight could take so much out of a girl!"

"Yeah, ease up, Priss," Linna added. "I know how much energy it takes to jump around like she does all the time - I teach aerobics and martial arts, remember? That's what's behind MY appetite, I just work it all right off!" A third helping of rice and vegetables had disappeared as she said this, without ever seeming to be in her mouth as she talked.

Even Cynthia had tried a bite of the breakfast dishes, along with a large glass of standard buma nutrient slush - it looked and smelled like a strawberry milkshake, but contained an entire week's worth of the necessary supplements to support her biological systems. She giggled as she explained, "I'm not supposed to have regular food, but it tastes so interesting! Major Rose said just a little bit wouldn't hurt, so he let me sneak a bite now and then."

Unsure of how to respond, the Sabers finished breakfast in silence. Finishing a last mug of coffee, Linna restarted conversation with a question. "This looked like a really big place on the way in, Sylia, and so close to Megatokyo! It must have been very expensive, especially just as a reserve."

Sylia nodded. "It's even bigger than you think - the property includes the entire hill above us and a reasonable stretch of the land beyond, as well as the section we drove past. It isn't just a reserve headquarters, however, this is a major part of the Knight Sabers infrastructure." Seeing the others' looks of incomprehension, she continued. "The Knight Sabers may charge exorbitantly, and none of you have yet complained that you aren't making enough; well," she amended, with an amused look at Linna, "not seriously, but as a money-making proposition it's a distinct failure. The majority of our operating expenses are paid for by the businesses I own in whole or in part worldwide. This farm is the largest I have sole title to, but serves even further than that - the staff here built the majority of our equipment from the designs I developed in my Lady 633 workshop. In fact, they've nearly completed their most recent and largest project to date."

Still a bit confused, Nene asked, "But... doesn't a farm take lots of people? How can we keep our secret if we're operating from here?"

"This isn't a traditional farm," Sylia replied. "Inside the greenhouses are high-yield hydroponic gardens, tended by robots - old fashioned, electronic robots. The surrounding grounds house pig runs and chicken coops, also maintained by robots, though with closer supervision. The far side of the hill is home to the Ishioka stables, which once supplied mounts to officers of the Shogunate's army and whose claim as a piece of national history were what cleared the way to acquiring permits to redevelop here after the Great Kanto Earthquake. Naturally, they have human handlers, but all told the staff is only thirty, all of whom have reasons to wish our success." Finishing her own coffee, Sylia got up and went to her room, leaving the door open since Mackie had already left to tend their equipment.

Priss was next to speak up, giving the doorway she'd gone through a puzzled look. "Ishioka? As in the Ishioka who bought into EMI Records Group about three months ago?" Her slightly raised voice carried easily over the sound of Sylia changing into her outfit for the day. There was a quiet pause, but just as the singer opened her mouth to repeat the question, Sylia reappeared in the doorway.

"I trust *this* is enough of an answer!", she ... bubbled. Priss left her mouth open, and Linna's and Nene's joined it as they looked at the ice-cool, level headed leader they thought they knew posing with hips cocked and a little arch to her back.

Sylia's transformation was simple in its elements, but the combined effect was... extreme. Makeup differently applied to make her features seem more angular, a short white skirt, tan stockings, and white jacket over a low-cut, light blue bodice, and a matching wig of powder-blue hair that fell to her shoulders. A pair of blue bows rounded it out, one tied around her neck, the other holding back her wig's - it HAD to be one, real as it looked - long bangs. Most of all, the attitude was what sold the ensemble, peppy and bouncy to match Nene, on a slow day at least. Playing out her surprise, she enthused, "Meet miss Cecilia Mitsuki Ishioka-Wayne, international playgirl and multi-gazillionaire!"

Nene broke out in uncontrollable giggles, while Linna still couldn't seem to close her mouth. Priss recovered the quickest, a slightly sarcastic grin on her face as she asked, "Has Mackie ever seen you in that?"

Nene giggled even harder at this, and Cynthia joined in, not getting the joke but swept up in the fun. "You look like Nene's big sister!", the little blonde girl said, between her own giggles. "Do I get to play little sister?" Even Sylia broke into a laugh at that.

Royal Guardian 215 had found that the new installation Her Highness's Knight Commander had chosen to move to was even better rigged for internal security than the previous one. This was good in that it meant its Partner was safer, but bad in that it made it more difficult to follow her command to remain unnoticed and still maintain an acceptable level of protection, even by the reduced physical standards its psychological analysis of Her mandated to avoid further distress. It appeared that Her Knight Companions had also been uninformed of the Guardian's impending arrival... Perhaps its unorthodox activation was indicative of some missed timing? Regardless, there were more immediate concerns.

It finally managed to penetrate the sensor net by masquerading as a ghost image of Squire Mackie as he tended to the team's equipment, then headed to the Security room. Having hidden there until Mackie had left, 215 set about interfacing with the security computer, using the protocol it had learned from the Squire's earlier attempts to provide external access. A subprocessor module was connected to the station's power supply and programmed to mask the Guardian's presence, then, secure from detection save by direct observation, it used the downloaded maps and data collected from monitor records to make its way to the Princess's sleeping quarters, keeping to the ceilings and altering its coloration to blend in.

Maintaining coverage and avoiding detection would be tricky, but calculations gave only a 3% chance of its being discovered for upwards of a week with proper precautions, and only a 12% chance in the week after that. By that time it could surely have reassured the Princess and her armswomen of its nature.

Sylia had been overacting a bit before, to make the most of her joke, but she remained much more outgoing than normal as she showed the Sabers and Cynthia around the living quarters and gym built into the reserve headquarters. Exiting through the hangar at the back of the hill and its stable-like disguised outer doors, she led the group on to the real stables around a slight curve in the rear face of the hill. The valley beyond was impressive in its natural grandeur, apparently some form of national park or preserve as it was also undeveloped. A large bird - a hawk perhaps? - circled overhead watchfully, and a small herd of horses grazed on the fenced field that dropped gently to a stream running through the valley, before the wooded slopes of the far hill led upwards again.

From her spot by Priss's side, Cynthia made a happy sound as she spotted the horses, and took a half-step in their direction before the singer's hand in hers reminded her not to act without orders. She looked up to see Priss's red eyes twinkling back at her.

"Go on, then," Priss said, smile widening as Cynthia ran over to the fence with a gleeful yell, the better to watch the horses.

"Who'd have ever thought you'd be good with children, eh Priss?", Linna teased.

"Yeah, well..." Priss fumbled for a moment, at a loss to explain her 'weakness'. "I just like kids that age. So innocent." A slight blush of embarrassment might have tinged her cheeks, but she'd turned away to face the horses as well.

"I think it's sweet of you, Priss!", 'Cecilia' put in. "Besides, what little girl doesn't like horses?" A slight nod of her head drew the others' attention to Nene, who'd been oblivious as she watched two of the herd prance over to the little buma-girl at the fence curiously. Her wide blue eyes had a sparkle of their own as she admired their elegance in motion, muscles rippling under smooth-coated hides.

Nene was brought out of her trance by Linna's muted laughter. "Huh? What's funny?"

Stifling herself, Linna replied, "Nothing, nothing. C'mon, let's go make sure she doesn't get bitten or something, okay?"

Sylia assured them, "The Ishioka breed is usually very level headed, but it would be a good idea. Besides, I want to introduce you to Mr. Akimoto, the head handler." So saying, she waved to the somewhat elderly man making his way out of the stables with a cane. His long white hair was tied back in a ponytail, and an equally silvered beard suggested some mixed ancestry, but his features and skin tone were pure Japanese. He greeted Sylia warmly as they moved closer.

"Why, hello Cecilia! Dropping by for another little visit, eh? And you brought some friends this time! Heheh..." The spry old gent briefly waved his cane to encompass the group, before leading them to the fence where one of the horses had allowed Cynthia to gently pat its nose. It blew in recognition as Akimoto came even with the little girl and reached into a pocket. Speaking more softly to Cynthia, he noted, "Yoko here is a bold one, but this is what she's really after." He pulled a small, green apple out of the pocket, and handed it to the girl. "Put it on your palm with the fingers together and flat, so she won't nip you taking it."

Doing as instructed, Cynthia giggled at the ticklish sensation of Yoko's lips snatching the apple, and again as Mr. Akimoto gave her hand a quick wipe with his kerchief to take the horse-spittle off it. Yoko, for her part, happily munched on the apple, then hung her head over Akimoto's shoulder and snuffled his hair. He laughed again as he gave the mare a quick pat on the cheek before turning back to the women and leading them all a few paces away from the fences.

"So, will you be staying with us a while this time, Cecilia?", the old trainer asked.

"A few days at least," she replied, before continuing. "These are the members of my special problem solving team, Linna, Priss, and Nene," she introduced. Priss smiled and nodded, Linna gave a polite bow, and Nene waved cutely as they were named. "Cynthia you already met," she concluded with a smile, as the blonde girl gave her own bow. "Would you mind watching out for her for a little, while I show the others the rest of the facility? I'm sure it would be much more interesting to her than a bunch of plants in little trays."

"Oh, I imagine I can, imagine I can. Would you like that, little one?" Seeing Cynthia's happy nod, he held his free hand out for her to take, leading her to the stable proper and pointing things out with his cane here and there.

"Will he be all right with her?", Priss asked. "She's a lot like a human kid, but she IS still a buma."

Answering the singer's real question, as well as her words, Sylia replied, "Mr. Akimoto makes a show of being everyone's favorite grandfather. He'll make sure she's safe, and if I know him she'll be full of a hundred horse stories by the end of the afternoon. As for security, this may look rural but it's about as heavily set with sensors and defense systems as anything can be and remain hidden. This way, now."

Sylia directed them to the small courtyard between the stables and the house where the Akimoto's lived. She waved to Mrs. Akimoto through the kitchen window as they went through the doorway leading back into the underground sections of the facility, past storerooms for the stables and then to a lift, that carried them up and into the administrative level of the official farm construction. As they made their way to the meeting room just outside her office, she asked, "Nene, you arranged an authorized leave with the ADPolice, correct?"

The pink-haired officer nodded. "Mmhmn! I changed the duty schedule so I'd have the next week off, and got out early by telling the Chief a family emergency came up like you said to. But Sylia, my record says I don't have any known family!"

"I know Nene, but we have to explain your absences somehow, and it will take several days at best to ensure that our identities have not been compromised. Linna, Priss, I want the two of you to use the vidphone here to make any calls you need to, and say that you've found an uncle in Hakkodate, but he's on his deathbed and won't hear of you leaving until he has a chance to tell you everything about other relations. Nene will alter the calls so they appear to originate from Tokushima, however. If we have been found out this should draw off pursuit and alert us when the Tokushima location is investigated."

Linna sighed. "I'd better go first, I was due to have a class in just a few hours. I hope Matsuda will be able to cover it for me with so little notice..."

Like an ocean liner on a moonless night, the space station Genaros drifted through the endless dark of space, viewports and running lights dotting its shadowed bulk as it passed over Earth's night side. Aboard it, at an integrated computer terminal/desk, a young woman tapped away at the keyboard. She seemed to be average height, with neck-length red hair and amber eyes. She was also very involved in her task, so much so that she jumped and squeaked in surprise when a loud male voice behind her said, "Hey MEG!"

Whipping around in her seat, Meg's eyes widened as she saw the station's young commander behind her. "S-sir?" she stuttered.

Waving his hands reassuringly the athletic man - a blonde, buzz cut specimen of the American Space Program acquired at the same time its hardware was sold off to the private sector, no doubt - continued, "No need to be jumpy, doll. You finish cracking the scramble on The HOTT Network like Hendricks asked you to, yet?"

Much relieved, but still keeping her body between the workstation and her superior, she replied, "Not quite, sir, it appears to be a triple-encoded algorithm, quite complex for a civilian system."

Nodding, the commander muttered, "Yeah, figures that the top American porn channel would be top of the line for security, too." Then, louder, he finished, "Well, wrap it up, and then report to my quarters for some - heh - operational load testing."

Hiding the distaste she felt in defiance of her programming, she simply nodded and acknowledged, "Yes sir... I was scheduled to go to Maintenance for a software patch at the end of this duty cycle. A stability-enhancer, from what I've heard of it. Should I postpone that until afterward?"

Already turning to go, the commander replied, "Nah, do that first. Last thing we need around here is another rogue buma."

Allowing her face to twist into the frown she'd been hiding as the door slid closed behind him, Meg muttered to herself, "If you knew how close you were to a rogue you'd be thinking a lot more with your brain, you twit." Schooling her features and turning back to the station, Meg continued to ignore the "Activate descrambler?" dialog box floating in the background, instead finishing her little jaunt into the station's black production database. Finally sure she'd disabled all the tracers, she selected a file named "BU35A_" and downloaded it to a datadisk. Logging out of the file system, she finally hit "OK" on the dialog box, and shut down the terminal after ejecting the disk and slipping it into a pocket on her jumpsuit.

Nam and Lou in Maintenance would upload it to her hardware tonight, and she could distract her mind while the basic Sexaroid programming took care of the commander by hacking it into her backup runtime image and use that to make a proper patcher for Nam, who should also be able to use it. A good thing the commander hadn't asked HOW it would increase her stability, since she doubted he'd approve of an unrestrained, intelligent buma with the martial arts that had been designed for the BU-35A project, when it had been deemed too risky for further development in the first place. Even if it would mean she had the same absolute balance and poise. She'd have to make it something she switched on and off, too, or the body language would give her away, and the accelerated responses would break her systems down even faster.

She was one of the last of the 33S models, most of the way to being a 35A physically, but the solution to the critical failing of her series had been the end of the 33S project and the beginning of the 35A... and that design update was nowhere to be found even in the most protected parts of Genaros's file system. If their little band of free-thinkers ever wanted to be truly free, they'd have to make it planetside somehow... She'd have to try to talk to Sylvie again the next time her shuttle was onboard.

Meg was determined, she WOULD become free. If she could do something about it, her friends would, too... and she was getting the idea that if all of them worked together, they could do a lot more than "something."

Tora and Hiryuko Kagami breathed twin sighs of relief as they stepped out of a blue-black hole in the air and into the shadows of a dead-end alley in Megatokyo. Neither was sure if their most recent adventure had been real, or just some illusion of their wills and the Realm Between, but they'd seemed to have been tossed back in time, before their own origins to the mid 1990s.

Making their way out to the bustling streets, Hiryuko asked, "Do you miss them sometimes? All our old friends and enemies?"

"Yeah, lotsa times, Hi-chan," Tora replied. "But this was a reminder of why we decided to break off seein' them, too."

"I guess you're right," she agreed. "And our daughter is HERE; whatever it was that hit us in the Realm Between just makes it even more important to find her, and Linna, right away. Linna should be pretty easy, now, since I was right next to her for a few minutes I should be able to find her by Dreamwalking. You'll have to watch over me, though."

"Of course. What else is a master half-spirit martial artist good for but to watch out for the girl he loves?"

They walked into the crowds as she leaned close and gave him the full list. It took quite a while.

Once again, Sylia's Mercedes was at the top of a parking garage, and her encryption systems were live. The General of the USSD looked even worse than last time, prolonged stress having drawn his face into a collection of hard angles far different than the chubby, rounded man who'd originally hired the Sabers. His eyes widened and his breath caught as he saw the Knight Sabers logo appear on his vidphone screen.

"We have recovered your black box, General," she calmly stated. She revised her opinion of him upwards by a small amount, as he released the breath and his shoulders relaxed. Obviously he'd been no happier than she that some unknown party could randomly decide to rain burning annihilation essentially anywhere on earth, though she didn't particularly trust in the military's hands either.

"You have no idea how good it is to hear that," he replied. "What of its design data?"

"The laboratory it was being studied at was destroyed, but beyond that there can be no guarantee. I'd be a fool to say so, and you a fool to believe it if I did. I trust the delivery arrangements still stand?" Sylia asked.

"Yes. We will send a courier to meet your agent as agreed, and the twenty million zenii will be delivered to the account you specified. There is one other thing, however," he began. "Our systems show that the satellites were receiving jumbled commands during the time I presume you were ... retrieving the black box. The system was designed to be untraceable and the link unbreakable, how - "

"Any signal can be jammed, General," Sylia cut him off. "Especially at its source. I only count it lucky that the target point was shifted to the unpopulated wilds of mainland China when the buma it was built into finally got through the jamming, instead of here in Megatokyo."

Down her opinion went again, reaching new lows as the general snorted and replied, "That's only because you don't have to deal with the Chinese. I could still lose my commission over this, and it's a black mark that will stain the USSD's record for years. Is there anything else you'd like to bring to my attention on this matter?"

"Yes," Sylia replied. This was the reason she'd even risked the call, with the threat of exposure riding over her. "The lab was a recently reactivated Genom facility, and we have photographic evidence of an executive car retrieving two people, or a human and a buma, and leaving the facility just after we defeated the black box buma. Not good enough to identify them, unfortunately."

The general's shoulders had tightened up again, and his lips pressed into a hard line as she passed on the information. He seemed to steam slightly, as he concluded, "It's unlikely in the extreme that we'll find any evidence of Genom being behind this fiasco, but if one of their facilities was involved of course we will have to investigate the matter. Thank you, Knight Saber, you will receive the extra payment as agreed." The channel disconnected without waiting for a response, and Sylia cursed softly. She'd had hopes that USSD at least would be a big enough juggernaut to confront Genom directly. *I should have known better,* she thought. *Genom has even more political power than their buma provide militarily, because nearly every OTHER world power has become dependent on them as well, on both sides of the Polar War.*

Still frowning, she started the engine, and pulled out of her parking space to head back to the new headquarters.

Linna stood outside Priss's dressing room at Hot Legs, while the singer argued angrily with the manager. They had to go fight a buma that had gone rogue near Sylia's, but Priss was due to go on stage and the fat man was giving her a hard time about it. He'd pull at his scraggly beard while she talked, then yell at them some more... Oddly, she couldn't quite make out what he was saying, but he seemed to be getting bigger and bigger as she waited and her watch beeped away the seconds. Louder and louder... and then everything faded away to swirling mists. "Wha?", she eloquently stated. "This must be a dream..."

A voice from behind her answered, "Yes, but not all dreams are fantasy, Linna." Turning to see the speaker, Linna first thought it was Nene, but only for a moment - the hair was right, but this woman was a bit taller, and her face slightly longer.

"Who are you?" asked Linna, confused. "Where is this?"

"My name is Hiryuko Kagami, and this," the redhead said, waving a hand through the mists, "Is the Realm Between. Halfway between the Mortal Realm and the Spirit Realm, this is where sleeping souls dream, and where restless souls haunt. Your friend Irene was such a restless soul, until you accepted her ring - I was here when she told you to take it that day, and you heard her with your heart."

Linna still felt confused, but the wispy, lightheaded feeling of dreaming had dissipated. "Her engagement ring? But... people become ghosts when they have something left undone... I can't get married for her!"

Hiryuko smiled, and moved a bit closer to Linna, from a formal distance to a more casual one. "Naah. She just wanted you to take it as a keepsake, so there'd be someone who remembers for her now that both of them are gone. But there was still something botherin' her, keeping her here. She was worried for you, because someone'd sent an assassin after her the same day you spent the whole afternoon together. So, me and my husband Tora agreed to be your Spirit Guardians. She was happy then, and I took her right to Enma Daio's desk."

"You're married to a tiger?" Linna repeated. "Well, I guess if you're a spirit you can change forms to match or something..."

Hiryuko giggled, and waved a hand in negation. "Heh, I told him it sounded like a tough-guy nickname, but he was so proud to be over the Neko-ken... Never mind that that was none of OUR doing... Anyway, we're not really spirits, well, sorta but not quite. See, we're both half human, so we have access to all three realms pretty much anytime. We'll find you physically soon, so we can take turns looking out for ya and looking for our daughter."

"Okay... I guess... I never really believed spirits and things were real before, but if you are and you're friendly I'm not going to argue." Linna shook her head, and waved her own hand through the mist. The two of them walked side by side, in a meaningless direction. "But what's that about your daughter?"

Hiryuko raised an admonishing finger. "You should believe in the kami, Linna, they believe in you. As for our daughter... We think she must be someone you know well, because traces of her spirit signature are very strong on you. Do you know anyone with bright red hair?"

Linna paused before answering. "Well, there is one person, but her family name is Romanova, not Kagami. I don't know anyone named Kagami, unfortunately. It may be someone who goes to the fitness center where I work."

The other woman's shoulders slumped slightly, but she recovered quickly. "Okay, well, I guess that'll take care of it for tonight. If we don't find ya in the next day or so I'll do this again to get a second bearing on where you are. Seeya around!"

Linna awoke to the subtle rumble of the new HQ's ventilation system. She lay awake under the soft blue glow of her clock face, and tried to remember the dream she'd just had... turning to the small stand beside her futon, she flicked on the lamp and picked up the chain she normally wore under her clothes these days, Irene's ring looped through it like a pendant. She watched the diamond catch the light of the lamp for a few moments as she turned it over in her hands, then, sighing softly, turned the light back out and went back to sleep.

* * *

><p>Next up: We're on a Holy Mission from God... and Brian J. Mason jr. takes down Saber White!<p>

Sylia...

* * *

><p>Opthalmascope: You know, that flashlighty thing with the black cone bits doctors use to look in eyes and ears.<p>

Why doesn't 215 just, y'know, TALK to the Sabers? It's not programmed to handle this kind of situation, and unlike a buma it can't act beyond its programming. It's really meant to be linked to a Partner all the time, completely subservient to their will and acting independently only to safeguard him/her while unconscious or in situations where ... er ... a lack of outerwear is indicated. It's an expert system for combat, infiltration, and weaponry, but very limited outside of those fields, with only a limited non-combat interaction script library. Its medical functions are very developed as well, concentrating on regenerative and anti-aging techniques rather than modification or replacement, but it remains to be seen how well they will be adaptable to humans, since an 80% match could fit any fantasy humanoid race just as well. It's anime, though - traditionally, the aliens are genetically compatible if they're anything like human-looking, so you can expect medical procedures to carry over more or less.

Why aren't the horses afraid of Cynthia, when an alley cat, arguably more intelligent and certainly harder to spook, freaked out at Sylvie in the BGC anime? Well, I'm saying it was because Sylvie's systems were partially breaking down, and she'd been, y'know, sucking people's blood and stuff. I figure the smells of death would have been pretty strong on her, and wouldn't you be a little freaked if someone that stank like a corpse offered you a bite of their burger?

Guardian 215 should be imagined with the vocal talents of Susan Blu; if you don't know her by name, she did (among other shows) Arcee on the post-movie Transformers episodes, as well as in the movie itself. You can even keep the flanging effect if you like, though it's not really there.

Many thanks to my pre readers: Patricia Kostan (who knew nothing of BGC, and helped make sure the story was understandable to people who were not familiar with the series), Nathan Baxter (who sent me a spelchekked version of this when I sent the first draft a little TOO rough), Hide Hasegawa (who also helped with Japanese), and Kaitlin Coelho.

Bubblegum Crisis belongs to Youmex and Animeigo, I make no claims otherwise. Please don't sue me, I have no money to speak of and fanfic does more to promote your products than anything else I know of - without it, I never would have known about anime at all, and I'd certainly never have bought t he BGC tapes based on the sucky box copy.

Ranma 1/2 I'm not so sure of, except that the creator was Rumiko Takahashi, not me, and that I make no claims to own IT either. Likewise, Dragon Ball was created by Akira Toriyama, and I may be wrong but THINK it's distributed by the same comic company as Ranma in the US, which would make the comics Dark Horse or Viz. Dragon Ball videos are distributed in the US by FUNimation, and ... well, that's all I'm saying about them.

EOF


	4. Chapter 3

04_BD_WOASS_Ch_03

2010-10-29 - fixed a small continuity error, numerous gremlins  
>2007-06-05 - important change to a line, so it actually makes sense now<br>12-12-2004 - Moderate grammatic and sentence structure changes

As the only one of the girls who hadn't been directly seen by the unknown robot that had infiltrated the Knight Sabers' original headquarters - she'd gone to bed by the time Priss was shooed out of the operating room - and the only one that both professed to care about what she had at her apartment and hadn't even been able to drop by and grab the most important things before being hustled off to the new HQ, Linna had been allowed to try to recover some things from home. It was going to be run like a full-blown infiltration op, though, with her hardsuit and the rest of the team standing by in the freshly repainted Knight Saber van to monitor things and jump in if it looked like a trap.

She was currently clearing her memento shelf into a box, while Mackie packed up her computer and took the parts down to the truck. She'd already put in the framed pictures she had, from happier times with the Kurosawas before relations turned bad, and carefully put the yellow stone ball - she'd later had it mounted on a wooden paperweight base - which Uncle had left for her in the box beside them, before lifting his picture off the shelf. His always somewhat puzzled-looking eyes gazed out of the frame at her, one of the footings of the Eiffel Tower behind his hair, greying at the temples but still thick enough to need a -

"Hey Linna, I'm done with the computer. Sylia says we'd better hurry it up, no point in taking chances even if it has gone OK so far." She jumped in surprise as Mackie's voice broke into her thoughts. "Say, who's the guy? Another boyfriend?"

Setting the picture gently in the box, she replied, "Hardly. That's Uncle Hibiki - well, not really my uncle, he found me in the woods as a toddler - who raised me until he was caught in a rock slide. That's it I guess, just the umbrella behind the door and we can go. You should probably take the box, it's lighter and I'm the one who works out all the time."

"Nah, I'll be okay... Geez, Linna, it feels like this thing is solid steel!" Mackie had nearly lost his balance under its unexpected weight; it was blued metal but made in the style of a classical bamboo umbrella. He hefted it with both hands and winced slightly as it settled onto his shoulder. "How can you use this thing?"

Face tight, Linna stepped swiftly out into the hall, saying only, "It is. And ... I can't yet."

Pulling the apartment's door closed and hearing the locks click home, Mackie peered after her confusedly. "I'll never understand girls..." he muttered.

Bewilderbeast Studios Present

BUBBLEGUM DISASTER

Season One

WISHES ON A SHOOTING STAR

A work of BGC fan fiction by ClassicDrogn

Chapter Three

The light of a wide screen display gleamed off the glossy finish of an antique F-1 racer in the darkened office of Brian J. Mason. A huge bodyguard slouched in the guest chair, legs crossed, while an attractive assistant operated the computer terminal driving the big screen, reporting occasionally in a quiet, monotone voice.

The man himself was pale, even more than usual, and the grey cast of his skin was accentuated even further, seeming almost leaden despite having also lightened a fair amount. His hair too had lightened, as had his eyes - though they were mismatched, one silver to match his hair and the other gold. Most notable was the change in his stature, even sitting he was nearly a foot taller, and his pinched, acerbic face had lengthened and filled out to an almost androgynous beauty. He no longer looked like his father had when he'd held this position... The cold look in those eyes was still the same, though, and the arrogant twist to the lips.

"Truck number two has been stopped by a Highway Authority vehicle for a spot-check. The BU-12B cyberdroid is activating now," the assistant reported. The main display highlighted the buma's position as its telemetry came online.

Mason frowned slightly, and asked, "Is it proceeding with its programmed objectives?"

"The cyberdroid has broken free of the truck... it is proceeding towards the ring line and the designated drop zone," she replied impassively.

"Very well." Mason's face returned to its unreadable mask, and he asked, "Which buma is it?"

Answering and reporting in one, the assistant said, "The type BU-12B cyberdroid equipped with 45 mm bazooka and machine gun, according to internal sensor signals has crossed the ring line at point B towards Tinsel City." Her fingers continued tapping rapidly on the keyboard, pulling up the buma's layout and other supplemental information to flash briefly onto the corners of the map as it continued to update, and a secondary viewer showed the received optical transmissions of the unit. "It's at point K through 266 and is engaging the 6th AD Mobile ... The Knight Sabers have also engaged the unit, having deployed from a rolling van. The van has left sensor range..."

No sooner had Linna gotten everything into the van, than Sylia had her suit up in case they were attacked leaving the area. She'd done so, then retrieved her umbrella from the corner where Mackie had gratefully dropped it. *So light like this... like Uncle always said his seemed.* She took a careful swing at the air in front of her, mindful of the van's limited space. Respecting her contemplative mood, the others just watched as she laid it across her armored knees and bowed her head, deep in memories.

A child's voice, in the forest.

"You'll see, Molly, I'll do it just like Uncle this time! He'll be so proud!"

Soft cloth in her hands, and the lump of a twig where a corner is tied to it. Throw! A yellow square whirls through the air followed by two more. Crossed sticks hold them flat as they swing wide of a broom set up as a target.

"Oooh... Well, I'll try it again. You never give up with just one try, right Molly?"

Spinning, spinning yellow...

"Aww... Okay, I'll try it once more Molly. Just for you and Uncle."

A yellow square stuck in the bristles of a broom, and a child's laughter. Suddenly a pair of huge, strong hands sweep her off the ground and spin her delightedly in the air, before closing in for a hug. Uncle talking to her with pride in his voice.

"Hey, good shot Linna! You'll catch me up in no time now!"

Happiness dimmed, as she remembers everything Uncle can do, and how he can just use the bandannas on their own.

"I'm sorry Uncle... I had to use sticks to make them fly..."

"That's okay Linna. I'm proud of you anyway, and I'm sure Dolly Molly is too."

"Oh, she is! But Molly wants to play now..."

"Go on then and play, you can practice some more another time."

A bit of dampness formed in Linna's eyes... She never had learned to throw the bandannas without frames, even if she did eventually come to enjoy Uncle's unusual method of woodcutting.

A loud curse from Mackie and screeching tires brought her back to the present as the van lurched sideways, bouncing onto the sidewalk and back to the street.

Clinging to the overhead hand-strap, Priss hollered, "MACKIE! What the hell's going on out there?"

Still fighting the fishtailing van, Mackie spared a moment to answer. "Some new type of buma just flew down the middle of the road - it's headed toward the Tinsel City area!" Finally getting the vehicle stabilized, he added, "Looked like some kind of combat type with a heavy weapon-arm... I don't think the ADP's going to have an easy time with this one."

At this, Nene tensed up. "Combat type? Oh no, we've got to help them!"

Settling her helmet, Sylia agreed, "Yes... and if it's heading toward Tinsel City, it's also heading toward the Lady 633 building. It may be that we beat out an assault team by minutes at Linna's apartment. We'll use the jump jets to deploy from the van. Mackie, you drop us off and then get out of the area - the armor on this vehicle is no good against anything more than pistol fire."

"Right sis. I'll monitor the commnet, of course. Hold on for now, I've gotta turn around before we go past the roadblock ahead." So instructing, Mackie hit the brakes again, and spun the wheel to skid the van sideways and around in the limited space left before the roadblock the ADP had set up to get traffic out of the combat zone. Putting the pedal down, he zoomed back after the buma, the overpowered van managing to keep it in sight as it headed for the cordon position the 6th Special Mobile Unit had set up back the way they'd come.

Tora and Hiryuko walked along the sidewalk arm in arm, looking a little depressed. "Ya' know - " they both started to say, then smiled at each other. He held her closer for a moment, then said, "We'll find her. You couldn't just let that soul wander the Realm Between, after all."

His companion looked up at him, and replied, "I know we will. We'll find Linna soon, too, but it's hard not to put our daughter first. It's been so long since we last saw her..." She paused mid sentence, her attention drawn inwards, while the man's gaze shifted to the huge brown buma flying down the far side of the highway.

"Whoa, that looks like trouble," he stated, then noticed his wife's distraction. "Hi-chan?", he asked, before catching the same feeling she had. "She's here! And getting closer fast!"

Hiryuko nodded, then pointed to a moving van speeding down the other side of the highway. "She's in that truck... and so is Linna!"

Without another word, the couple turned toward the street and leapt, bouncing off the roof of a passing bus and then from light pole to light pole in pursuit of the van.

As soon as the police line came in sight, Mackie swung the van again and the Knight Sabers, all riding on the roof by this point, used its momentum to spring ahead on their jets.

The big, vaguely crab-like buma was painted dark brown, with a pair of sensor booms extending from its back for wide-field depth perception, its right arm a large bore rocket propelled grenade launcher with a coaxial machine gun. It was hosing down the ADPolice with machine gun fire as it flew towards them, their riot armor doing little against the anti-vehicle weapon.

Nene felt her gorge rise as five of her fellow officers were cut down, the powerful rounds dismembering them in a bloody spray. "I think I'm gonna be sick," she whimpered.

Priss was more pragmatic, advising "Be sick later, we don't have time now!" as she leapt to the attack, using her palm blaster right between the buma's sensor booms during a break in the police gunfire and leaping away as the few surviving officers opened up again. No one on either side noticed when a pair of stray rounds, that probably would have just bounced off her armor, were suddenly deflected in mid-flight a half dozen feet away from the flipping singer. Unconcerned and for all she could tell undamaged, the buma blew the 6th Unit's APCs out of the way with a pair of bazooka rounds, then continued on its programmed course.

Holding onto her stomach with all of her will, Nene set to work patching into the ADP radio channels, so the Sabers could allow for the police's actions. Just as she succeeded, the 6th Unit commander reported, "This thing is kicking all kinds of ass - the Knight Sabers are here and even they don't know what to do with it. I'm engaging the K-11s!"

Hop-skipping with trails of smoke from their thrusters, the Knight Sabers followed, catching up rapidly when the buma confronted a pair of the blocky ADP K-11 Armored Trooper suits parachuted in from a hovering cargo aerodyne. The ADP pilots quickly brought their own machine guns to bear, but the buma blocked with the shield built onto the outside of its weapon-arm. Lifting off on its thrusters again, it headed further down the street, only to be slammed into the ground as Linna used her knuckle bombers on the same spot Priss had fired her palm blaster. The effect was more noticeable this time, one of the sensor stalks jarring loose, leaving a gap at its base. She gave it a solid swat with the umbrella she'd forgotten to put down in the excitement, knocking the stalk further out of alignment before leaping away. Not giving the buma's repair system time to recover, Nene used her laser - weak, but plenty strong enough to sever the electronics once the armor was breached - to disable the sensors on that boom completely, firing at the peak of a jump to get the right angle, then getting swatted away with a careless backhand swipe of the buma's normal, left arm as she tried to get a kick or two in herself.

With their firing line clear again the K-11s opened up on the distracted buma, damaging the main set of optics built into the leading edge of its carapace and causing a secondary explosion that blew its left arm off and threw the buma through the windows of a shop. Righting itself in the crushed remains of the Silky Doll display counter, it calculated its options. Deciding additional cover would be desirable, the buma fired a bazooka shell at the back wall of the shop, collapsing it into the lift shaft beyond, and another to blast the exposed lift doors open, revealing a wide hallway to the rear of the building.

Bouncing through the hole left by her store's main display window, Sylia ordered, "All of you get clear and keep the ADP from moving into the building. Mackie, are you there?"

Over the commlink, he replied, "Of course, sis. I'm parked in the Circle K lot five blocks west of you."

"That doesn't really count as getting out of the area," she scolded, "But never mind now. I'm going to disable the buma so it won't escape, you stand by on the demolition trigger!" Catching up with the buma near the middle of the hallway, Sylia activated her energy saber and sank it into the buma's back, bracing her other hand against that wrist and using all of her momentum to cut a wide gash down the buma's rear armor where it couldn't reach her.

Mackie protested while she fought to keep her grip on the thrashing BU-12B. "Sis? SIS! You can't be serious! I know you planned it as a contingency, but -"

Springing away again as it tried to crush her against the wall, she replied, "Not now, Mackie! Just wait for my signal!" The white Saber fired a hail of shots from her blasters to make it shield its remaining optics again, then vaulted over it one last time, a final blast entering through her earlier slash and destroying its hip actuators. Crippled, the buma fell to the floor and scrabbled around with its remaining weapon-arm. It got itself into position and fired a pair of rockets, forcing Sylia to dodge up the lift instead of continuing on out the front of the store. One of the grenades did so however, knocking away the K-11 that had just stepped into the ruined shop despite the best efforts of the other three Sabers, while the other impacted on the wall of the lift shaft and chased Sylia up with a fireball. Seeing the roof of the shaft start to break from overpressure, she gave it a few blasts herself, then dodged the remains and commanded, "Blow it now, Mackie, I'm clear!"

At the communications console of the Sabers' van, Mackie sighed and flipped up the cover on a switch with yellow and black warning bars around it. He held the toggle against its spring for a few seconds, while a red indicator beside it flashed, then released it again when the lamp burned a steady red.

Dodging the K-11 that had just gotten blown back out of the Silky Doll, Priss activated her external speaker again. "I told you not to go in there, you idiot! Saber White's got a plan, and it needs you AND us clear!"

Turning and brandishing the suit's gun pod, his partner warned her, "Now listen, you! You might take out the occasional buma, but you're still just a bunch of mercenaries, and the Commissioner would be just as happy if we took you down as well as the buma. This is *our* job, so -"

He was cut off by the rumbling explosion as the white-suited Knight Saber escaped trough the roof of the elevator shaft, a rumble that increased instead of dying down. The other three Sabers blasted off on their jets to join her as she trailed smoke across the sky and touched down on top of the building across the street, surprising the bare-chested guy and his girlfriend who'd been watching the fight before it moved indoors. In the street below the ADP pilot backed his K-11 as fast as it would go, as every window on the building was blown out, one floor at a time from the ground up. The street seemed to be crumbling out from under him and it didn't look like he'd make it until a dark blur - or maybe two - with a suggestion of red and blue, grabbed the shoulders of his suit and knocked it further off balance, all three vanishing into a blue-black hole in the air. A huge cloud of dust arose as the building seemed to slump back and into itself, then toppled into the pit of collapsed underground levels, along with the sidewalk and part of the road. Fortunately the effect stopped short of the buildings to either side. For a minute or two, the dust covered everything, lit eerily from within in the gathering darkness. As it began to settle it become obvious what was causing the light - the fires of a ruptured gas main that had formerly supplied the building's heat, now shooting a gout of fire onto the pile of twisted metal and rubble that was all that remained of the formerly multi-storey building.

Nene didn't bother with anything more than making sure her back was turned to the rubberneckers as she tipped her helmet up and made use of a large potted plant to finally let her stomach have its way, though she wasn't miserable enough not to be surprised as the normally tough Priss joined her.

Linna kept a hold on the man and woman's shoulders, making sure they faced away from the incapacitated Sabers, with the advice, "Don't worry about it, just think about the reaction next time you have a party up here and tell the story of the time the Knight Sabers hurled in your shrubbery."

Sylia, for her part, leaned against the waist-high protective wall around the building's edge to catch her breath, and tried to wipe soot from the explosion off her optics. *I was a fool to try that alone,* she thought. *That thing almost had me several times... but I couldn't risk the others with the building rigged to blow.* What was worse, that she didn't even dare think to herself, was that her coordination had felt a bit... off... in a way she hadn't been since going through her teens.

As Priss and Nene slipped their helmets back down, a blue-black hole opened up in the air on the far side of the rooftop patio, and the wrecked parts of a K-11 suit fell out of it with a clatter, most showing rather rough edges, as if "cut" with a small but essentially blunt object moving with great force. After they'd settled, Tora and Hiryuko stepped out, carrying a quaking ADP mecha pilot by his shoulders. As they let go, he dropped and kissed the floor, as if overjoyed to be back in familiar surroundings. Tora cleared his throat in the way people do when they're trying to get someone's attention, and the pilot eeped, then scrambled into a corner and pretended to be unconscious. "I didn't see nothin!" he proclaimed. "I don't see nothin', and I won't see nothin'!"

Linna, Priss, and Sylia took ready positions, while the bystanders - sensibly enough - chose to finally flee into the building proper. Nene, on the other hand, just stood there, completely open and unguarded. "Momma? Poppa?" Her voice was tiny, barely audible even over the hardsuit speakers.

The man with blue hair and the woman in red, matching Nene's own, stood just as dumbfounded for a moment. Finally, the woman broke the silence, saying, "Really, Kireiko. If you're gonna be a fighter you can't let your training slip - you coulda' dodged that monster's backhand when you were five!" Her tone held nothing but love and longing, regardless of the words, and the hardsuited Nene rushed into her arms, both squeezing tight.

Oddly enough, it seemed to be Nene who felt it more, despite her hardsuit. "Ack, Mom, easy! I have to breathe, you know... Oh, I don't care, just never leave again!"

Linna had startled when she heard the woman's voice, and the dream of two nights before came back to her. Before she could say anything, though, the ADP heliplane lit up the patio with its spotlight, and the 6th Unit's commander could be heard over the bullhorn ordering them to surrender and lie face down. "We've gotta get out of here!", she gulped.

"Right," Sylia agreed. "Linna, you and Nene go north, Priss and I will go south. Lose the ADP and then meet at the Circle K west of here. You two do whatever you want, as long as you don't get caught," she told the two strangers over the exterior speakers. "I don't know you, but it looks like Saber Pink does, and that's reason enough to trust you for the moment. Knight Sabers, GO!"

To the surprise of all the girls, but especially to Nene, Hiryuko picked her up hardsuit and all and took a few running steps before bounding away to the next building with a springing lunge from the patio's retaining wall. Tora was right behind, and Linna had to scramble to keep up, thrusters or not. Sylia and Priss stared in shock for a moment, as the ADP officers in the heliplane above apparently did as well, then jetted off south as planned, easily leaving the stunned police pilot behind.

"MoooooooooooOOOM! PUT ME DOWN! Really, I'm a big girl and I can do this just fine on my ooooOOOOOOOOOOowwwnnnn..." Nene's complaints quickly died down, though, the need for radio silence to avoid having their positions tracked taking Sylia and Priss out of range of Nene's unaided voice quickly.

Mason smiled coldly, and steepled his hands on the desk before him. "That will be sufficient. Recall the other units, we won't have need of them tonight." The polished desktop reflected his face as he pondered. *Sylia Stingray... My childhood friend. I'd never have guessed, but I should have known. Who else could even hope to match me?*

The wards of the prison were almost destroyed; without the extra power they had been getting from this world's kami they had no chance of containing a demon of his level. Better still, the guardian of the shrine was a fire spirit, whose powers would be next to ineffectual on the one that had lain trapped so long. The elderly head priest and his two assistants had been switching off, praying nonstop in front of the cubicle for days now trying to strengthen the wards. New ones had been hung around it as well, but soon enough...

Wait, what was this? An outsider had entered the shrine, and was talking with the miko in the front room, asking for some pitiful charm or whatnot... Such a fine, burning anger that one held! Even from this far away, the demon could feel itself growing stronger.

With a burst of blackness edged in reddish purple, the wards around the small, ornamented, wooden box turned completely black and crumbled away. Beads of sweat stood out on the old priest's forehead as his will engaged directly with the evil spirit, and two shouts of surprise from the front room were answered by the roar of the sacred fire as it flared up in its brazier there before appearing in a whirling funnel around the prison box as it jumped and rattled.

Head thrown back and face reddening in exertion, the old man desperately chanted the spell of sealing, but to no avail - he fell, blood flowing freely from nose and ears, as the top of the box sprang open and a shapeless cloud of purple-black flowed out, darting appendages dueling with the fire whirling around it. The miko too had rushed into the small back room, and - foolish child - prepared an attack spell that drew on the fire spirit already opposing him. He ignored it, letting her draw strength away from his true foe, while the blackness flowed and slowly escaped the funnel, bit by bit closer to freedom.

Having heard the whoosh and crash of the spell, the other human had come as well... Such power that one had! A fine hate indeed. Darting free of the fire at last, the cloud of darkness permeated the human and possessed him, power increased a hundred fold by the anger and frustration he held. Before she could properly react, he reached out and stopped the miko's heart, letting her fall unnoticed as he rushed back to the alcove, where the fire spirit was regrouping itself. A smaller metal brazier was torn from the wall as he passed, it's fire already extinguished as the bright brass darkened and became iron.

A cyclone of black and red tore apart the guardian's flame as it curled in midair and forced it down into the box. As the cover slammed closed, the lump of iron in the possessed man's hand flowed like a snake, wrapping around the box in seamless bands, misshapen, spidery runes appearing on them that glowed a sickly purple.

"He hEh HaH hEh HaA... NoW kNoW yOuR oWn MiLlEnIaL sLeEp, GuArDiAn!" he gloated, before the power faded and he had to release his hold on the human whose body he rode. Possession was not one of his innate abilities, and used far too much energy to enforce as a spell. Unlike the guttering candle that had guarded this shrine, there were some spirits that could overmatch it, and who would easily detect the use of so much power. For the moment, he would hide his presence and feed on his human, until a more suitable, permanent host could be found. He remembered that the humans had been getting very clever with metal the last time he had been free, perhaps this time he would be able to acquire a body more durable than the stone statue he'd used before.

For the moment, he hid in the human's aura as it frantically looked around the scene, stumbling away in a panic before mounting a construct of metal and some kind of carbon/silicon derivative material, which bore it quickly away through the human settlement of metal, glass and sedimentary stone.

Clever indeed... And *such* a feast!

On the roof of a building above the Circle K parking garage, Sylia paused for a moment and looked around. Priss looked back at her, waiting to jump down and get back to the van, visible in its new Ajax Rent-A-Truck colors on the upper level a few storeys down. *Strange... I could have sworn I heard someone call my name...* With a mental shrug, the white-suited Saber motioned Priss to follow and leapt, falling on quiet puffs of her suit's jets to land gently on the building's verge. Quickly, they crossed to the van and entered, to find Mackie alone within.

"Geez sis," he chided, "I was really worried about you getting caught when you had me blow the building... Where's Nene and Linna?"

"They may have had more trouble than we did evading the ADPolice," Sylia replied, a worried look on her own face as well.

"We should never have let them go with those two black-coated weirdoes," Priss grumbled. "Not when our covers have been blown, no matter how familiar Nene thinks they are. Besides, didn't she call them her parents? You said none of us had any family, Sylia."

The leader of the Knight Sabers shook her head. "That was what my research turned up... I wanted to make sure none of us had family to be used as hostages in a situation such as this. Nene's official records list her as an orphan of the Kanto quake, but while she admitted they were false, she also told me that her parents had gone missing several years ago, before the quake. If they've truly returned, she may want to leave the team." To her credit, the "no retirement but death" clause of the Knight Sabers' charter didn't even pass through Sylia's mind - its draconian strictures had proven too tight to live by in reality, and were freely ignored for the most part, except in the matter of keeping their secret identities.

"Wait, what's that?" Mackie asked, piping the image from a side camera into the video channel of the van's communications system. The missing Sabers and the two strangers had joined them on the rooftop, appearing out of a blue-black portal similar to the one the unknown man and woman had originally used. Oddly, both Linna and Nene were wearing martial arts outfits instead of their hardsuits, and the others had large bundles strapped to their backs. Neither appeared to be overly hampered by them, though the van rocked noticeably when first the woman and then the man shrugged off their packs and set them inside, by the boxes of things from Linna's apartment. The blue-haired man actually used one hand to do it, garnering a raised eyebrow from Sylia, as she mentally calculated how heavy they had to be to affect the heavy duty suspension of the van that way.

"Where on earth have you been?" Priss demanded, "And where are your hardsuits!"

Cringing a bit from her emotional friend, Nene somewhat meekly replied, "The hardsuits are in their packs, but -"

Remembering Nene being carried away, suit and all, in the woman's arms, Sylia's eyes widened at this. She knew to the gram how heavy the suits really were, and no normal human should be able to carry one so easily... Hiding the motion behind herself, she tapped a few keys on the van's control console. She let Priss keep their attention, as the singer interrupted again.

"No way! It's impossible." Stepping to the packs and crouching to reach, she snapped open the clasp on one of the packs and pulled the flap up, revealing Nene's pink and blue suit with the legs detached and stuffed into the torso for more compact carrying, plus some camping gear. Her eyes bugged out.

"Don't do anything hasty, Priss," Sylia advised as she read the scan results. "These really are Linna and Nene. Dental and skeletal patterns are as exact a match as the van's sensors can determine, though their muscle mass has increased slightly and energy levels are a bit higher than I'd normally expect." The dark-haired Saber looked at her wayward team members, and the still mysterious people who had joined them in the back of the van. She addressed this latter pair as she continued, "Linna's arm also appears to have been broken and healing for about a month, which I know is not true. You've already defied what conventional physics and Dykstra field theory can explain with those portals of yours, and I think it's about time you tell us exactly who you are and what you want."

Just then, an ADP Firebee flew slowly over the parking garage, still looking for them. Loath though he was to miss the conversation, Mackie figured it would be better not to be around if the pilot made a second pass over this location, and started up the van, heading for the down ramp. He still kept an open ear to the back of the van as he headed for a small warehouse Sylia owned, a prearranged place to take the team if they had unknowns with them, after having had to deal with the Cynthia situation.

Brushing a bit of bright blue hair out of his face, the man began. "I'm Tora Kagami and this is my wife... well, pretty much, Hiryuko."

"We're Nene's parents, who's really named Kireiko," Hiryuko added. "Nene was kinda a nickname since she loved making cat noises when she was little and we weren't used to not having... never mind, that's not important..."

Picking up the break, Tora steamed ahead with, "So anyway, all we really want is to be with our daughter again and keep an eye out for Linna here since her dead friend asked us to be her Guardian Spirits. See, we're both half-spirit duplicates of a guy named Ranma Saotome who turned into a girl sometimes and got his reflection caught by this cursed mirror, which sucked the closest spirits into itself and remade them into mirror-clones of any mortal that looked into it. But we don't change sexes ourselves, and we dropped a couple other curses in the process too, so we're better than the prototype."

Hiryuko nodded happily, and took up the story again, regardless of the more and more nonplussed looks on Sylia and Priss's faces. "After we got used to being on this world, thanks to some lessons from Ranma, we decided to leave so the people out to kill or marry him -"

"Or both," interjected Tora. Nene slid into the seat at the communications console while her parents continued.

"-Or both, yeah," Hiryuko acknowledged, with an annoyed look, "wouldn't tie us up in their own troubles. Of course, we found plenty more of Pop's stupid deals he'd run out on to make more problems on our own. Then we had Kireko and settled down, only going on training trips for a month or two at a time, and makin' sure challengers knew better than to try it when she could get hurt."

Irritated himself at the next set of events, Tora frowned as he finished off, "Then a buncha stupid Shinto priests trapped us in a temple for ten years just when Nene was gettin' old enough to really start training, and we only just got out and found her again now, after the temple got bought and demolished. I think they said something about a new Genom spork factory or something, but we didn't really stick around."

The two of them shared another look, to see if the other had anything else they thought was relevant, then nodded together and smiled at Sylia, who had her arms crossed and one eyebrow practically climbing into her hairline. "And you expect us to believe all this?" she asked.

"Huh?" asked Hi-chan. "Why not? That kinda stuff happens to everybody, doesn't it?"

Having reassured herself that rediscovering her past hadn't made her forget everything that was normally important to her present, Nene noted, "Well, not really Mom. Most people only have one or two little things happen and forget about them, I think, like seeing a UFO." Nene pointed at the console's screen, which showed a European-style sailing ship silhouetted by the rising moon as it flew across the sky. The patrolling ADP Firebee entered the frame, wobbled noticeably as the pilot saw it, and then flew right back the way it had come. Priss simply switched her disbelieving glare from the Kagami elders to the screen, while Sylia and Linna blinked, and Tora and Hiryuko quietly wondered if Kirin and the Seven Lucky Gods martial artists were on the prowl again. The van turned into a warehouse parking lot, then went through the automatically opening door, cutting off the view before any more could really be said about it however.

"Since it's getting a bit stuffy in here, why don't we take this to the meeting room?" Sylia suggested as the van pulled to a stop. "It's the set of temporary partitions set up just beyond the warehouse office section, there."

They made for a decidedly odd-looking group sitting around a table that could have fit in an executive boardroom, two women in powered armor, two in training outfits consisting of black slippers and pants, a quilted red top with the kanji "sempuu hiryu" ("hurricane air-dragon") on the back, and dark blue arm and leg bands. Linna had kept her usual yellow bandana while Nene opted for an elastic sports headband to keep her hair out of her eyes. Tora and Hiryuko looked almost normal, in black dusters over similar outfits, though Hiryuko's top was blue. Priss kept her visor closed as she slouched into a chair in one corner of the room, where she'd have a clear field of fire - scans or not, she still wasn't convinced these were the real Linna and Nene, let alone about the Kagamis. Sylia kept her visor closed as well, but stood at the head of the table, unobtrusively turning on the recording devices as she resumed the conversation.

"_Even if_ I can accept your outlandish... *magical* origin story, that still doesn't explain Linna's arm, or how you could carry their hardsuits easily in a backpack, when each of those suits weigh about the same as they do."

Linna rubbed her left arm through the sleeve of her Chinese-style shirt, and noted, "Actually, that's probably even more unbelievable, Sylia..."

Linna barely kept up with the Kagamis as they roof hopped, even with the jump jets in her hardsuit. It was unbelievable! At least the woman - Nene's mother? She'd said she was looking for her daughter when she'd met Linna in her dream - had put her down, and seemed to be giving her pointers on jumping without using the jets.

"Ya know," the man called out, "We could just slip into the Realm Between!"

"That dream world?" Linna asked, letting the speakers amplify her voice.

"Yeah!" answered Hiryuko. "Let's do it, Tora!"

She bounded ahead, to the far edge of the building they were crossing just then, and opened another of the blue-black portals in the air just beyond the ledge around the building's roof. "Everyone in!"

Nene had put on a burst of speed as well, trying to keep up with her mother, and couldn't stop in time to avoid the weird-looking disk. "Wait, yeeeek!" she protested as she skidded the last few feet before tripping on the ledge, and falling headfirst into it. Tora was much more graceful, jumping easily over the side of the building and into nothing, while Hiryuko stood beside the open portal, maintaining it.

"I don't like this much, but I'm not going to leave Nene alone just yet," Linna muttered. She cast a quick glance over her status displays before jumping through herself, quickly followed by Hiryuko. Unattended, the hole in space shrank down to a point and vanished.

Tripping through the somewhat oily looking hole to the Realm Between, Nene found herself falling along a cloud bank, spinning end over end. A few quick bursts of thruster-fire put a stop to the second problem, but while she couldn't feel any wind resistance the wispy grey tendrils of mist kept sweeping past her at an impressive clip, her spin having halted with her body in something like a skydiver's position, legs bent at the knee, arms at an angle to each side of her body. There was no ground in sight, the grey of the cloud bank darkening to fade into the black of the sky beyond some immeasurable distance above, below, and to each side. It stubbornly refused to show up on the suit sensors, as well, in fact they were all blank - radar, lidar, loran, gps, everything but direct optical apparently out of commission. "Whoa, this is really weird," she whimpered to herself, the sound of her own voice reassuringly normal as it echoed back through her hardsuit audio system. Wondering where everyone else had gotten to, she scanned around, desperate for more information on this strange environment. For just an instant, she was sure she'd heard someone calling out to her, and she strained her eyes, her ears, trying to find anything but clouds...

Suddenly her perspective shifted, and she wasn't falling past a vertical wall of mist, but flying above it in a silly sort of kneeling position. Almost as soon as she thought it, Nene leveled out into a classic superheroic flight pose, almost the same as the diving position she'd had before but with legs straight and head raised to see ahead of herself.

Wait, what was that? Off to her right, a patch of color shone against the darkness. Again without thinking about it, she steered towards it, then wondered how she'd done such a thing. Only a moment later, she was upon it... a faint smear of colors and motion, ethereal and almost too faint to see. Again, she thought someone called to her... looking around again for the source, she saw that the flickers of color sliding past were gaining definition and solidity, to the point she could make out shapes, and a babble of sounds tickled at her hearing.

She was flying past - through - worlds. A sorceress tossed an explosive spell at a group of brutish looking humanoids in furs; two businessmen in tattered suits fought a desperate sword duel with beams of light; a woman in some kind of space fighter blew up fighters with the Genom logo on them, then swooped down on a huge space station, like Genaros written on the scale of a moon. Cynthia waved to her from the back of a horse in the middle of a galloping herd, as they raced across a huge field with the new Knight Sabers base in the distance, and Nene happily flew closer, waving in return. There was a slight tug at one ankle, and the field slipped away from her... Lost in wonder Nene willed herself to greater speed, trying to catch up, but this wasn't a plain, it was some forested mountain region... she noticed that air resistance had returned, and she could feel gravity slightly, despite still continuing levelly on over the treetops.

"If I can feel gravity, shouldn't I be falling?", she wondered, as she paused in the air. "waaaaaaAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH! I DIDN'T MEAN IT!", she screamed, as she suddenly fell.

"What's wrong with Nene?", Linna asked as she arrived in the darkened landscape, mist hugging an unseen floor at mid-calf height, sky impenetrably black but somehow still lighting everyone evenly, if dimly. She found Tora seemingly doing a magic trick, pulling a glowing red cord from his right hand and gathering it in a coil in the left. Just in front of him, a slightly faded-looking Nene tumbled head over heels in midair, then leveled out in a crouching position with her maneuver thrusters. Oddly, the jets made no sound, and Nene didn't seem to see them when she looked around after Linna called her name. She faded out more, and Linna realized that she could actually see the tendrils of mist through her fellow Knight Saber, as she shifted position again, to something like a classic flying posture familiar from flying dreams the world over.

Hiryuko joined them in the mists of the Realm Between, and grumbled something unintelligible as she took in the situation. Raising her voice to more normal levels, she stated, "Let me guess, she's gone dream walking on her own, instinctively."

"Uhuh," Tora confirmed. "She's definitely your daughter, all right. A real talent for spirit travel." Even as he spoke, he made an odd gesture with his right hand, and the end of the glowing string appeared, as a loop. Spinning it like a lariat, he cast and snagged it around one of Nene's ankles, even as she faded still more, the coil of line playing out with a sudden eagerness as she faded entirely away, stretching and zipping to a vanishing point like a starship's special effect for going to FTL. The cord itself settled down and fell to the mist, somehow floating on top of it as if it was as solid as a fluffy pillow, instead of a mere cloud of vapor. It trailed off into the blackness, the end lost in distance.

"What happened?", Linna demanded. "Where's Nene!"

"It's a little complicated," Hiryuko explained. "Being physically present in the Realm Between is different than comin' here in a dream, or even as a restless soul after death. It looks like Nene's tapped into her spirit legacy instinctively now that she's actually here, and she's entered a dream world of some kind or another... normally that's something you do from the Spirit Realm or Mortal Realm, so when the dreamer wakes up you just pop back to yourself, but being actually present whatever world Nene ends up on will be stabilized and permanent until she leaves, if it's not a stable subrealm all on it's own. That means we have to try to track her... fortunately that's no problem with the link Tora made, but once we travel it we have to find out where in the Realm we are before we can get out, and that's going to take some time."

"Oh no... How long?" Linna asked. "If we don't get back soon Sylia and Priss will start searching for us, and that could be trouble with the ADP all over, cleaning up from the buma rampage..."

"Probably a couple weeks," Tora answered, "but don't worry, it'll only be a few minutes in the Mortal Realm - it's like time in a dream."

So saying, he and Hiryuko each took one of Linna's arms in an acrobat's grip, then Hiryuko folded her right hand into his left so that they both seemed to be holding the thin, glowing cord. "Get ready," she warned, "because here we GOo._"

The red cord suddenly pulled taut, snapping off of the mist and vibrating like a bowstring. An instant later all three of them warped and faded, vanishing just as Nene had. The mists swirled as they always did, but left no wake behind them.

No sooner had Nene pulled herself out of the conveniently hardsuit-shaped hole she'd landed in than she felt a tug at her ankle again, and tripped back in. "Owie..." she complained. "I wonder where this is? It doesn't look like anywhere I've ever been..." Sitting up again, she was startled to see her parents and Linna fade quickly into existence and fall in a protesting heap by her feet. She briefly noticed a loop of red between the Kagamis' hands and her ankle, but it vanished before she could catch more than a glimpse, and she dismissed it as a trick of the light.

"Are you OK?" she worried, helping to lift Linna off the top of the pile, so her parents could get up.

"I'm fine, Nene, but what happened to you? You were just hanging in midair like you were flying..." Linna asked.

"Oh *yeah*! It was so much fun Linna, I was really flying, without my suit jets or anything!", the pink saber enthused. "I even saw Cynthia too somehow, but I lost her when I came here."

Eight days had passed, and the Kagamis had set up a campsite with their traveling gear, sharing one tent while Linna and Nene took the other. The hardsuits had been shut down and made as compact as possible, then put under a tarp with the firewood. They'd relocated a couple miles from their entry point, to the base of a cliff near a babbling waterfall with a pool suitable for bathing. Each day, Hiryuko would spend three or four hours trying to sense their 'position' (for lack of a more accurate term) in the Realm Between, before exhausting her energy and joining in the physical training.

Tora had conjured training outfits for the two Knight Sabers, since their softsuits were both a bit uncomfortably revealing and the sensors too easily damaged to use them for training in, so all four were decked out in chinese-style tops and black pants with black slippers. He'd also discovered on the first day that Linna's chi flows were incredibly tangled and confused - it was a wonder she could move at all, let alone be a passable martial artist.

Naturally, Linna had protested this description... until he'd walked over to the cliff face and carved the life-size image of a tiger in it with invisibly fast finger-strikes. He'd done what little he could to smooth the flows out, and she was still ahead of Nene... but the lead was rapidly closing. For her part, Nene had mainly regained the skills she'd had at six, which would likely rate her a black belt or two in most arts, but was merely the foundation as far as her father was concerned. The same near-eidetic memory, focus, and learning curve that had served her so well in learning computer skills allowed her retrain lost reflexes and learn new refinements, now that her body was mature enough for real training.

It had also come to light that she was only fifteen. That she had, in fact, just TURNED fifteen as of a few hours before.

"WHAT!" Priss fell out of the chair with the force of her own shock. Even Sylia sat down hurriedly in the chair she'd slid out of the way behind her. "Nene CAN'T be fifteen! I mean... Just look at her!"

Nene's face twisted into the fiercest expression anyone had ever seen her wear, as she leaned forward and demanded, "What's that supposed to mean, Priss? I'm an early bloomer, and if you're jealous because of how I look you're not half the person I thought you were!"

"Now just a damn minute!", the blue suited Saber protested. "That's not it at all! I just don't like putting a kid on the firing line! It's the same reason Sylia doesn't let Mackie join us on missions!"

If anything, Nene's scowl got even deeper. "Don't call me a kid, *granny*. I do everything the Knight Sabers need me to, AND hold down a real job, unlike SOME people!" Noting Sylia starting to get back up, she turned to the leader of her team. "And don't you start on me either! YOU picked ME, not for my age, not for my looks, for my skills. Have I let you down at all!"

"..." Swallowing shock at Nene's outburst even more than her revelation, Sylia tried again. "... No, Nene, you've performed your duties as the communications specialist on our team admirably. It's just..." Uncharacteristically, she was caught without the words to express herself. She sighed, and tried it one more time. "In the months you've been with the team, you've done very well, even your combat skills have gone up appreciably. It's just a shocking thing to find out, that's all."

This brought a more familiar happy grin to the youngest Saber's face, though she was still tense. "If you thought I was getting better before, just wait'll you see what Mom and Pops have been teaching us! Hurry up Linna and tell them about our fight on the last day!"

"Can I at least get done with the part I'm at first?" A nonplussed Linna asked.

"Oh, go ahead. But you'd better tell the truth when the time comes or I'll have to tell it!"

Mackie, still watching from the truck while keeping an eye on the security monitors, muttered over and over, "Fifteen... she's fifteen... two *years* younger than me..." Unnoticed, a trickle of saliva ran down from a corner of his gaping mouth.

"WHAT?" Linna didn't quite fall over from the force of her own shock, but it was a close thing. Without the balance training she'd been doing, she undoubtedly would have.

"What," Hiryuko asked, "I can't wish my little girl a happy birthday?"

"Yeah Linna, what's the matter with that?", Nene protested.

"But... but... You're in ADPolice! They don't HIRE fourteen-year-olds!" This wasn't the first thing Linna had thought of, but she didn't want to be rude.

"Pshaw, that's nothing a little record hack couldn't fix. I knew I'd have to do something to earn money or I'd be in trouble fast after I left the orphanage, and if there was anywhere safer than ADP headquarters I couldn't think of it."

Still trying to disbelieve, Linna asked, "are you sure about this?" Her own somewhat mysterious past made this less of a foolish question, to her mind at least, than it might otherwise seem.

"I think I'd be unlikely to forget the date," Hiryuko interjected. "It was somewhat memorable at the time, after all."

Giving in, Linna smiled ruefully, and suggested, "You should have just applied at a certain lingerie shop, Nene. It would have been just as safe and faster in the long run... Oh well, happy birthday. Sorry I don't have anything for you."

"Oh, that's okay," Nene replied ingeniously. "It's only been a few minutes back home, remember? I turn fifteen again in a few days! And how many people get to say that?"

Shifting the topic, Hiryuko stated, "It looks like we might be able to get back soon; I almost had an answer yesterday when I had to stop."

"That's great news, Hi-chan!" Tora had stayed quiet up to that point, watching the by-play as it happened. "We've really gotta get someone to look at Linna's chi and get it straightened out, it's holdin' her back like crazy. For now, though, it's time to train."

The girls were surprised when Tora called a halt to their solo practice after two hours of basic to intermediate katas - since neither of them were yet capable of the aerial stunts required for advanced ones - as they normally kept that up until Hiryuko had called a stop to her scanning for the day and the one-on-one instruction would begin.

"You've been training now for just over a week, with the best two martial artists in Japan," he began, "and we can see how much better you've gotten. But, since you've only been working against the best, I'm not so sure you realize how much you've improved, especially you, daughter. So today, you're gonna spar with each other instead of me and Hi-chan."

Both Knight Sabers blinked at this, and gave each other questioning looks. Nene was the first to respond. "Aw pop, do I have to? Wouldn't a little more practice first be a good idea?" Thoughts of her last training simulator run weighed heavily on her mind.

Reassured that he was right, Tora held firm. "Yep, you have to. Linna's your friend, right? She ain't gonna hurt you much."

Taking ready positions, Linna winced, while Nene muttered, "That wasn't very reassuring..."

Knowing she'd be waiting all day if she waited for Nene to make the first move, Linna opened with a simple straight kick to the younger Saber's side. To both of their surprise, Nene danced automatically out of the way and into position for a couple of quick punches, the first of which even connected lightly with Linna's own lower torso, just below the ribcage.

Jumping back with their eyes wide in surprise, both Sabers reassessed the match. Linna adjusted her position slightly to take strain off of that muscle group for the moment, to allow it to recover. This time, Nene took the initiative, with a feinted punch to the same spot followed by a kick of her own, which was deflected efficiently before Linna grabbed her still-extended arm and pulled Nene further off balance. Leveraging the redhead into a throw, Linna took a moment to brush the spiky black hair back from her face where it had escaped her bandanna, and was surprised again when a rebounding Nene nearly got her with an uppercut.

Dodging, Linna somersaulted backwards and pushed off Nene's chest as she went, knocking her down for real this time, but the taller girl was too far out of position to take advantage. On her feet again, a much more confident Nene charged at Linna, only to spring aside at the last moment as she got ready to counter with a judo-toss, but still wasn't quite fast enough as Linna got in a sweep kick and forced the young redhead to jump over it, rolling to her feet almost immediately, even as Linna was already moving for a knee to the abdomen before Nene could get her guard back up...

It was at this moment that Hiryuko finally figured out their Realm Between position, and with that the forces to use to open a portal to somewhere else. Her cry of success distracted Linna just at the critical instant... as Nene threw her.

Neither of the girls had realized how close they'd gotten to the cliff face, having been so intent on the match, and Linna had just time enough to bring an arm up to protect her face before she slammed into it with a sickly crunch.

Nene's face drained at the sound, and she sped over to help her friend sit up. "OhmyygoshI'msosorryLinnaIdidn'tmeantowillyoubeokayI'msorry I..." Her babble cut off like a switch had been thrown as she helped Linna up and saw her left forearm bending in the middle. "DADDY!"

"Is that accurate enough, Nene, or do you want to tell it again?

"I meant the part before, Linna... I really am sorry about your arm; it was just an accident..."

Tora was already right behind her; he nudged his daughter out of the way and examined the break. The skin wasn't broken, and (after applying a nerve-deadening pressure point) feeling it cautiously revealed it to be a clean fracture, so with a pull and a slight twist he reset the bones, and then used a basic healing spell on it - the only one he could manage, generally, since Hiryuko tended to be better at them than he did - but it sufficed admirably to repair the break as he held the arm in position, giving it a few weeks worth of healing instantly.

Just in time, too, as the pressure point began to wear off, and instead of searing pain Linna felt only a slight ache. "I'm here, and I saw you conjure these outfits," she wondered, "but it still didn't quite sink in... You really are magical spirits, aren't you?"

Joining the group, Hiryuko answered, "Yeah, we really are. AND, I've finally found our way out of here! Let's get packed up and go!"

From the ledge of an inaccessible cave opening on the side of a mountain three miles away, a western-style dragon that had abandoned the Mortal Realm until the silly humans got done denying the mystical in favor of playing with their new toy, technology, snorted as he saw the somewhat amusing half-spirits and their unusual companion leave his little domain by way of a fairly standard magical portal. He'd have to tell Gaderaseth about them when she came over a bit later... but there was time for a nap first, she wasn't due for a few thousand years. He yawned mightily, and tucked his snout under a foreleg.

"I think you were right, Linna, that was even more unbelievable," Sylia said.

"No kidding," added Priss. "NENE threw LINNA? Now that's unbelievable."

"Hey, that's not nice..." Nene pouted.

"Maybe you'd like to try your luck against her?" suggested Tora. "As a martial artist, it is of course her duty to accept any challenge."

Behind her helmet, Priss cast a doubtful look over Nene, who was torn between irritatedly agreeing with her father or arguing with him over the 'accept any challenge' thing. For all that the others could only see the singer's helmeted head cocking slightly, the intent was still clear. While Hiryuko merely looked on, bemused, Tora's challenging glare intensified until the air between himself and Priss seemed to crackle.

*You'd think she was insulting his own abilities,* Sylia thought. In an attempt to lighten the tension, she broke in with, "I suppose it's too much to hope that there might be some kind of external corroborating evidence of at least some of this?", her tone halfway between entreaty and resignation.

"I've got some family photos, and the Kagami name is still on the national register," Nene suggested.

Sylia nodded, then wrapped up in a resigned tone, "To tell the truth, the most compelling aspect of your story is the number of supposedly impossible things you've demonstrated doing it; if any of our enemies had such capabilities they would use them more directly. Still, we will need to talk it over as a team. Would it be acceptable to meet us again here tomorrow at this time?" Even as she spoke, Sylia's agile, analytical mind was postulating defenses against those "impossible abilities"... the most difficult part of any radical new technology, as she well knew, was simply believing it to be a possible goal, and finding some avenue of approach. There HAD to be a predictable, duplicatable theory behind the ability, it was simply a matter of finding it and exploiting it in reverse. Something about the well-known Heigelmann Inconsistency in Dykstra's equations tickled her forebrain in light of these new observations and the force-blasts that Priss's strange visitor had used.

Tora looked ready to balk again, but Hiryuko beat him to the punch by agreeing. "Yeah, I guess it's only fair," she said disappointedly. "I'll see you tomorrow, Kireiko. Linna, don't let her slack off, I want you both to train tomorrow with the katas you've learned and against each other." Pulling a smile back to her face, she continued, "Try to keep each other intact this time though, OK?"

Nene, flustered, simply groaned at her mother, while Linna acknowledged, "Yes, sensei!"

Satisfied, or at least as well as she could be being separated again from her daughter, Hiryuko concentrated and opened a portal in the air behind their seats as she and Tora rose, then the two stepped through it and away.

In Sylia's mind, a four-dimensional field graph sprang to life, tensors and vectors shaping it one way, then another, starting from the known patterns for particle beam focusing fields and progressing to pure kinetic force projections, but never quite reaching the solution to pull open a seam in reality, or to keep one from opening. For just a moment she was motionless as visions of scientific sugarplums danced in her head, but the Sabers' leader soon shook herself back to the here and now. She and Priss finally slid the visors of their helmets up, all four team mates sharing questioning looks.

Linna was the first to speak, breaking the silence. "Sylia, I think you should know... Hiryuko told me they'd tracked Nene and I down by our personal energies," she began. "Reconstruction of Megatokyo after the Kanto quake may not be finished yet, but it's still one of the most densely populated cities on the planet, and they found us here in two days after getting just a trace of a reading. We were together in that dreamland for over a week... I doubt there's anything we could do that would keep them from finding us again, alive or dead, or that we could keep them out of anywhere they truly wanted to be." She shook her head with finality, continuing, "They could walk right through any conventional defenses. Tora carved a nine foot long image of a tiger in solid rock, using a single finger, in under a second; even a buma would have trouble doing that. It was nothing to him."

"They've really got you sold, don't they?", Priss snorted. "This is so full of bullshit they're shoveling it in Hong Kong... Sylia, why are you shaking your head at me? You can't actually believe this crap too?"

"As I said, Priss, the very impossibility -" Before the white Saber could even finish the sentence, the singer cut her off.

"Damn, you too! Fine, have fun telling tall tales to any more random weirdoes you meet, I've got somewhere to be." Giving no time for anyone else to protest, Priss marched out of the meeting room, making only the briefest of stops in the partitioned off equipment area to climb out of her hardsuit and change into a set of her usual motorcycle gear before hopping onto her new motoslave - stashed here for this operation to be closer to hand if something went wrong - and gunning it out onto the highway.

"This *can't* be a good thing, can it sis?", Mackie asked over the still-active sound system. It wasn't really a question.

"I'm afraid not," his sister confirmed. "Keep a close ear on the scanner, Mackie, if any more buma show up tonight before she returns we'll have to assume they're after her and scramble to intercept. At least she did take the motoslave, even without her hardsuit to link to, its independent combat mode should be enough to escape or destroy even a small group of buma as long as she can give it commands."

After taking a moment to consider this, Sylia took on a stern aspect, and commanded, "Nene, I think it's time you told me your real history."

The redhead looked a bit subdued as she acquiesced, "Okaaay. It's not really all that different from what I told you originally, though, except for my age... My parents were always going on adventures, one or the other of them, which would last a month or so before they came home. They'd promised I could go too once I was six, but then they disappeared one day when I was about five and a half - I don't remember that exactly of course, but that was when it happened - and after a couple of days when I went to borrow some peanut butter from the nice old lady who lived next door she reported it to the authorities, and I ended up in an orphanage... I was always sure that they'd just gotten caught up in a real adventure instead of a normal training trip, like they said used to happen to them all the time, and that they'd come back someday. Eventually I discovered how much you could do with a computer, and I ran away from the orphanage because... b-because..." Nene's head lowered, and a teardrop fell to the polished tabletop. "I was an early bloomer... and there was this older boy there, who said he was going to... you know... as soon as I turned fourteen. I made up a false history and set myself up as a new transferee to the ADPolice records department, because if they could stop a buma, surely they could stop Akito. I ran away on the night before my birthday. It was just a couple of months later that I found your system, Sylia, and you know what happened from there."

Linna moved to take the pink Sabers' shoulders in a hug, and Sylia too stepped around the table, taking Nene's hand carefully in her handsuit's manipulators, since it had them on both arms. "I'm sorry, Nene," she apologized. "I had no idea..."

Sniffling, and after a wipe at her eyes, Nene smiled feebly up at her. "It's okay, Sylia... It didn't happen, and now that Mom and Pop are back I think I can finally get over it... but that's why I was so upset the first time I caught Mackie peeping." Her eyes widened as she suddenly realized that he'd been listening in all along with the teleconferencing equipment, and no doubt had just heard everything she'd thought she was telling just to the other women.

The same thing apparently occurred to him as well, because his voice came through the speakers again. "I... I'll be good from now on, Nene," he promised. "I won't chase underage girls. Um, if it makes you feel any better, you had me fooled too, I never would have thought such a great looking woman was two years younger than me."

"Thanks Mackie... I guess." She wasn't entirely pleased to be thought 'too young' for anything, and compulsive peeper or not, Mackie was kind of a sweet boy... but there were some things that SHE wanted to choose the time for, and if being 'too young' protected that, well, 'too young' would do.

Anger mostly cooled by a bit of hard riding, Priss pulled into the parking lot of a toy store... She knew just the thing Sho would like for his birthday, and if Sylia and the others could palaver with two total unknowns, she could see a friend and her son on his sixth birthday, and secret identities be damned.

The human had ridden around on its contraption for hours, confused and frightened by exposure to things not in its world view, and in the process given the demon quite a tour of their settlement. Had he possessed eyes, it would have been an eye opening experience, for the humans had somehow constructed a city to match the scale and even some of the grandeur of the City of Iron, though most of the surfaces were too bright and the lack of blood and entrails in the gutters left the air scented only by combustion products. Still, it was a grand attempt, and the amount of anger and frustration it felt from the humans they passed by was astounding. Still, his human remained the best choice of host for the time being.

Finally, he grew tired of it, even so, and wiped its memory of the event, adding a disinclination to consider spiritual aid in the future as a precaution before returning to the back of its mind.

For just a moment, the man's attention seemed to be wholly elsewhere, only returned to his riding at the last moment by blaring horns and screeching tires as a car and two SUVs almost got into an accident avoiding him. Shaking his head clear of a whole day's distracted rambling, J. B. Gibson headed back to the apartment and Naomi on his motorcycle... And in the back of his mind the notion that cars and motorcycles don't mix lodged against idle thoughts of upgrading his own project since it was in the garage already.

It was nearly midnight, and Sylia was only now going to bed after having stayed on alert with Linna and Nene until Priss had returned to the new headquarters. She was still annoyed at them and refusing to elaborate on where she'd gone, but cooled off enough to be civil at least. Now, as the dark-haired woman laid back on her bed, the whirl of recent events pressed in and paraded across her mind's eye... so very much had changed, gone wrong, or been revealed in such a short time... and she had the sinking feeling that things would only continue on that course.

*Sylia Stingray*

Her eyes snapped open... she had been sure she'd heard someone call to her last night, and now, without the noise of the city in her ears, she KNEW she'd heard it. The only problem was that there was no-one whose voice sounded like that in the entire compound.

*My childhood friend, and now my enemy. Could you be capable of these changes as well? All the rest of us have vanished.*

Her mind raced, but no coherent thought lasted long enough to visualize.

*Where are you hiding out, now that your business, and I suspect your headquarters, is gone?*

*WHO!* Finally, a concept that stayed in her mind, for the first time since she'd heard the strange, echoing voice.

*HOW CAN YOU KNOW!*

Brian Mason, leaning far back in an easy chair in one of Genom Tower's executive suites, froze as a woman's voice intruded on his musing. His hand dropped from where he'd been playing the little metal beads on the fingertips across his chin, and he looked around the room, all attention focussed on finding the intruder. No more enlightened, he rose and searched the room, then called for Security to look for hidden devices. He'd had a long day already dealing with the aftermath of some stupid have-not who'd run back into a collapsing apartment building with her son, so he didn't stay to hear the results, instead just taking a different suite for the evening.

The unknown voice stilled, Sylia lay awake a while longer before drifting off to uneasy dreams, of the Wiz Labs daycare center she'd spent so much time at right after Mackie was born and their mother died.

A day passed, and the Sabers had once again gathered in the meeting room area of Sylia's warehouse. Priss had only reluctantly agreed to come to the meeting without her hardsuit, but after seeing Nene reach Level Seven in the holographic training simulator, while Linna cleared Eight easily and even squeaked through Level Nine, she had at least been convinced that the Kagamis could be valuable physical trainers, if noting else.

Sylia had spent the day delving into the computer networks, confirming as much of the Kagamis' story as possible, and had come up with as much verifying information as was likely to be available to find. It wasn't really enough to satisfy her, but at least nothing had set off warning signals.

Nene had for once enjoyed the time in the training simulator, blowing away her old performance benchmarks easily, though she knew she'd only cleared Level Six with a lucky hit that was little more than a desperate attempt to keep her balance after dodging than a true attack. It got the job done, though, even if Level Seven had wiped the walls with her. Soon she'd be just as good as Priss, the Ape Woman herself!

Linna too was riding high, having beaten her longtime sticking point at Level Seven and lucked through Nine as well, though not quite so flukily as Nene had beaten Six. She'd gone out to the horse field and run there, while Mr. Akimoto and Cynthia rode a trotting Yoko beside her as well, for a good half-hour before rejoining Nene for their warmups and sparring... She actually hadn't had to pester the redhead about it at all, after a week of the routine, and with the prospect of showing Priss that even if her "good looks and amazing brainpower" were the pink Saber's main stock in trade, she could pull her weight in a fight too.

Mackie was again monitoring the warehouse security systems and listening in on the conference room from the van, but Cynthia had also joined him there - Mrs. Akimoto, her usual caretaker, wasn't feeling well this evening, and he'd offered to keep an eye on her while the meeting went on.

At almost exactly the same time they'd left the previous evening, Tora and Hiryuko returned, stepping together out of one of their usual portals, both bearing serious, even foreboding expressions. Knowing that both of them tended to be easygoing, Nene immediately asked, "What's wrong, Mom? Pops? Has something happened?"

Hiryuko just bit her lip, while Tora answered, "Yeah... something really big happened. You've been summoned to an audience with Kami-Sama. All of you," he added, looking around at all four Sabers, "Plus the boy and the girl in the van. He sent us to come get you. Um, if you'll come of course."

"It's generally a good idea to come when Kami-Sama says 'come', though," Hiryuko noted. "I'm sure ya can see why."

Nene immediately rose to join her parents, while Linna turned to look questioningly at Sylia, and Priss simply stood, flabbergasted at the audacity of these strangers.

"How?" Sylia whispered, then cleared her voice and asked "How did you know she was with us?" She *knew* that there was no telemetry signal coming from the buma-girl - for some reason the transmitter had been implanted in one leg, and they hadn't replaced the half of it left after Priss's emergency amputation, for obvious reasons.

"*He* told us," was Tora's answer. "It's not the kinda thing He's in the habit of doing but He said it's important you all come... we were going to take Linna and Kireiko anyway, since our daughter is family and He has to approve it for us to really be Linna's official Guardian Spirits instead of just friendly unofficial ones."

Priss stepped forward, angrily. "If you think you can just pop in here and get us to gallivant off after you, you're ... arg, Sylia, tell them!"

Sylia still hadn't stopped staring at Tora, nor did she break her gaze as she asked, softly, "Whose voice did I hear?"

Hiryuko muttered, "Had to ask the question He gave us the vaguest answer for, didn't you?", while Tora rolled his eyes and sagged slightly. "We specifically can't tell you exactly who, you have to figure it out yourself," she continued, "But you get a hint: It's someone you were very close to long ago, but your lives led apart."

It was Sylia's turn to bite her lip for just a moment, unaccustomed feelings of indecision wracking her.

"Sylia...", Priss began again, only to stop when the Saber leader raised a hand for silence.

"What were the other answers?" she asked.

Hiryuko knit her brows for a moment, making sure she remembered them correctly, then replied, "42, Andy the Invisible Anteater, and 'Both, depending on how you define 'together''. At least, that's the order He listed them in."

Sylia closed her eyes and nodded. then spoke quietly but firmly. "Priss, we're going with them. Even if they aren't who they claim, if they have such a good model of me that they can answer the most unlikely questions I can think of before I ask them, they already know or can easily discover anything they need to about us."

Priss started at the note she heard in Sylia's voice... something she'd heard in her own once, just before she'd been recruited to what had previously been a solo crusade. "Sylia..." she repeated, worriedly this time. If the cornerstone of their organization broke... Bound up in her thoughts, she didn't protest any further as they joined Mackie and Cynthia at the van, and only hesitated slightly before stepping through the double portal the two Kagamis had opened, a foot-wide strip of the Realm Between visible between two fringes of blue-black as they stepped onto a mountain ledge where the sun was still perhaps an hour above the horizon, a gravel trail leading to the valley below where they could see a large garden based in a hedge-maze. Going further up the mountain, it led to a temple or palace of some kind, which had apparently suffered some disaster recently, as its main dome was wreathed in wooden scaffolding, which numerous workers were climbing over.

A moment later, the nature of the disaster was revealed, when Cynthia gasped, "This... this is my empty place! I can't see us in the sky-pictures, even though they're looking right at me! Oh no, someone might have been hurt when I made the satellites shoot here instead of at you!"

Tora's eyes widened at this, and he stammered for a moment before getting collected enough to instruct, "Ah... yeah. Come on, we need to walk to the Palace."

Despite the steep slope, the path was well maintained and the climb was brief. The workers had vanished as well; there was no one in evidence inside or outside the beautifully designed and appointed palace as they entered, even when they passed right through one of the areas being repaired, until they came to a small bedroom much more humbly laid out than the rest of the building, where a beautiful woman with long, light brown hair was adjusting the bandages on a young man, and helping him lie back down on the one, small bed. As the group spread out around the bed, she moved back to a chair and sank into it, apparently exhausted.

For his part, the man had the classic slavic features, and when he spoke a trace of a Russian accent snuck in every now and then. "Good... good, you are all here." he greeted them. "I do not think there is much more time."

Sylia's mind felt numbed, like the whirl of her thoughts, of events pushing her along, had left her dizzy. She'd noted the surroundings, the small comments the others had made, but the only fully realized thought of her own since she had ordered her team to come here was, *This is Kami-sama? The highest authority is an injured man in a small, plain bedroom?* She hadn't spoken aloud, but he answered her anyway.

"Heh, yes, I am the Kami of this world, and Ranger of the North Sector of the galaxy. Piotr Gregorevich, lord of all I survey. Heheh..." His muted laughter turned into a hacking cough, but after a moment he was able to continue. "Is it not a delicious irony? For one hundred years I have been God, and I gained the power at the same time my homeland became atheists. Ah, but many of them continued to believe, when the political officers were not looking, and many looked away because they, too continued to believe. But you are not here to hear about me... You are here because you felt that everything has gone out of your control, and you no longer know what to do to regain it. This I can give you; the lesson I had to learn myself: The only one you must control is yourself, and sometimes the best control to is relax and be free, to regain your focus and renew your energy. You will need it, for it will be your decisions, and those of your friends, that determine the fate of this world."

Next, he turned to Linna, who had also noticed Sylia's unusual manner and had watched her with troubled eyes. "Your past is even further reaching than you think, and you will find its pattern soon enough, but right now your own pattern must be untangled. It may feel odd as I do this." Kami-sama closed his eyes, and a knotted, multicolored grid of lines glowed around and somehow through her, then as if by the hand of an invisible weaver it shifted and straightened, the pulsating colors and patterns smoothing into a steady, white glow as she floated slightly off her feet, twitching every now and then and making faint, pained sounds that rapidly turned to sighs of relieved tension, as though getting a really good back rub. As the glow faded, she sank again to her feet, then stumbled to a kneeling position. "it will take a bit of getting used to, because your reactions are now different, but you should be fine with a few hours of practice," he told her, his voice noticeably weaker than before.

The nurse who'd been tending him as they entered spoke up, saying, "Oh, you really should conserve your energy, or ..."

He smiled at her, in a fatalistic kind of way. "This is a necessary thing, Bell, and conserve it or not I will soon enough have no more need of energy... you are part of the cycle of things, you know even better than I that even Kami-sama passes from your custody to your older sister, before another may pass from your little sister to you."

Her expression still troubled, the nurse sat back down, as Kami-sama's attention shifted again, to the Kagami elders and their daughter. "Tora, Hiryuko, you are officially appointed the Guardian Spirits of Linna Yamazaki, her get, and her line. You may protect the innocent and the helpless, and teach your art to all who are worthy, and conduct yourselves as you otherwise choose, but you may not join the battle directly with her, or your daughter, or their companions, because they must overcome their challenges alone if they are to succeed at what must be done."

"We understand, Kami-sama," Tora acknowledged. "Sometimes ya gotta take the hits, or you won't be tough enough for the next fight."

"Kireko, to you I must apologize," he continued. "Your childhood was difficult, as was the shared childhood of your parents, and because you too are half-spirit, any child of yours will also have, at best, an unusual upbringing. It is the Spirit Mark of your line, along with the brightly unnatural hair coloration, for so long as you walk the Mortal Realm. In exchange, you are gifted with enhanced memory and physique, and will not age unless you choose it. It is not a bargain of your making, but it can not be changed."

"I remember the stories Mom and Pop told about the bargains Grandfather stuck them with... if it doesn't leave me with half the people on the planet wanting to kill or marry me, and sometimes both, it's not so bad by comparison," Nene explained. Despite the glib answer, she seemed contemplative as he moved on to Priss.

"For you I can do almost nothing, because you will accept almost nothing. There is room for almost nothing in you but anger, your only exception your friends and your music. I give you then almost nothing, but perhaps you will find some use for it." Holding out a single finger, he formed a faint soap-bubble ball of energy, that glowed softly like the promise of dawn just below the horizon. It floated towards her gently as he lowered the finger again.

Ignoring Bell's shocked gasp, the suspicious singer looked at the slow-moving sphere doubtfully, then asked, "What is it?"

"It is the light which never fails," the bedridden man replied cryptically, before lapsing into another coughing fit.

"Looks like a soap bubble," Priss noted, poking the drifting ball. It popped, leaving a slight dampness on her finger that faded almost immediately. "Never fails, huh?", she smirked.

"It is the light of hope," Bell said softly, as she came back to the bedside, and laid glowing hands on her patient. "When times are at their worst, people will be able to look up to you and take courage. I knew when my younger sister began to learn the fighting arts that there would be terrible struggle in times to come, but it will be your touch that gives everyone the will to carry on through them. It is a very precious gift."

Priss's own lyrics ran through her mind then, with ironic meaning. *Tonight, a hurricane, touch me, hurricane, show me your love with your touch! Burning touch!* She looked at the fingertip that had brushed the bubble, uncertainty in her eyes.

Stabilized again for the moment, Kami-sama spoke again. "Mackie Stingray," he began. "You would accept almost anything from me, but you will find almost everything you need on your own, in time. Instead, I must ask you to do me a service. You need not, but it will make certain matters easier in the future."

"O-of course, Kami-sama," the younger Stingray agreed. "Anything I can do, I will..."

"Thank you... There are seven magical artifacts I would like you to keep safe for me, until the next Kama-sama arises. I have gathered them already. Bell, the bag?" Taking a sturdy leather pouch, closed with a strap and buckle, from his nurse, he opened it, and laid out six fist-sized yellow stone balls and a small, detailed statue of a coiled dragon. "There is another of the balls in the world, but it is safe where it is," he instructed. "When I die, these will lose their power, but it will return with the next Kami-sama. When that happens, it may be that there will be an immediate use for them, or perhaps you will simply be able to return them and be done with their burden. Until then, keep them always safe." He returned the items to the pouch, and rebuckled it before passing it to Mackie, who slung it over a shoulder.

"That leaves only you, little snowflake," he said gently to Cynthia. "It is true that it was the beam you diverted away from your friends that struck me down, but it is in my power to forgive you that, for you did not know the harm, and sought only to protect. You fear turning into a monster, and are soon to outgrow your appearance. Both things I can fix for you, if you too will do me a service."

The little blonde buma, who had, to that point, half-hid shyly behind Mackie's leg, pursed her lips, and looked around at her friends, and at Bell, and at Kami-sama. She stepped forward, and took the hand he'd offered. "I... I'll try to help," she offered. Usually big people had just told her to do things, before she'd met her new friends, and she still wasn't used to being asked for her opinion.

A glow built around Kami-sama, and extended itself to surround the buma-girl as well. It brightened, and her clothes and hair seemed to be buffeted by an unseen wind, even as small loose objects nearby levitated and began to drift around the room. Bell's eyes widened as she saw what was happening, recognizing the process but knowing that its normal purpose would be impossible for this girl. The others looked on worriedly as Cynthia seemed to split into a double image, separating into two transparent copies of herself, identical but for one having slightly more golden hair than the original and the other mirror-bright silver. The dual images seemed to swirl for a moment and flow back together... then it became obvious that somehow while the human-looking outer forms were indeed merging, an orbiting shell of mechanical parts were accumulating in the air around the re-formed Cynthia. They too flowed together and compacted considerably, forming a head-sized metal egg. Its surface was slightly wrinkly and swirled with hints of color in the bright chromefinish, and it touched down beside the girl with a gentle, solid thunk.

As the light show died down, and the many small things hovering about dropped to the floor, Kami-sama let out an exhausted sigh, and explained, "Normally that spell is used to separate out any remaining evil from someone who is to become Kami, but without malice in your heart I was able to use it instead to recreate you, Cynthia. Your body will grow like a normal little girl, as will your mind. As for the remainder, well..."

Kami-sama lay back to husband his strength, while a wash of light played over the metal egg. In its wake, the shell pulsed and began to unfurl like an old ship's sails, or a flower bud. The thin memory-metal sheets straightened and smoothed, becoming two sets of butterfly wings attached to its contents - a pair of miniature Cynthias, one with straight, neck length black hair, the other with slightly shorter, bluish-silver locks. Both had pale skin with only the faintest hint of pink, soft grey eyes to match their mistress', and stood the height of a normal girls' doll.

"Oh, they're beautiful," Cynthia sighed. "What are their names?"

The miniature girls each gave a polite bow and appeared to speak, though the sounds they made seemed more like tiny bells or the bleats of an old fashioned telephone modem than any human words.

Whatever it was, it seemed perfectly clear to Cynthia, who returned their bows and greeted, "Yuki, Hotaru, it's nice to meet you. My name is Cynthia." Their jingling voices sounded again, then recognizably laughed. "Oh, you knew already?" she replied. "I see now."

From his cot, Kami-sama smiled at their antics, then explained, "yes, little one, they were part of you, and really they still are... You share a single soul. They will always be there to protect you and keep your secrets, and help you to decide when you are torn between two paths. When the time comes, they will help you learn to use your potential as well." His breathing grew ragged, and his face paled. "My time... in the light... is short. I must pass the Heart of the World, as it was passed to me... Cynthia... you cannot merge with it, but when the time comes, you will know the one who can... On that day... you will know what must be done..."

While the little girl stood, rooted in fear, he drew the sheet covering him away from his chest, and beams of light broke through gaps in the bandages before a glittering, multifaceted crystal, glowing with blue energy and several inches across, rose out of his chest as if it was no more substantial than a cloud. He cupped a hand around it, and held it out to the little girl, who took it in shaking hands, somehow holding it despite her fingers never coming closer than an inch to its surface. The weight of the huge gemstone forced her to hold it close to her chest, and it sank away out of sight almost immediately. Oddly, Bell, Nene, and her parents seemed to blank out until it was safely hidden away again.

Seeing this last thing done, the former Kami-sama let his eyes close, his hair rapidly turning steely, then grey, then stark white as his features aged decades in the span of seconds, his face becoming gaunt and withered, as the century and a half since his birth would normally be due. His chest fell a final time, and Bell sadly pulled the sheet back up to his chin, the peaceful expression on the ancient face seeming merely asleep.

"I will give you transport back to Megatokyo," she informed them, "as the Realm Between is unlikely to be safe for travel for a few days. It is usually shaken up for a bit when the Heart changes bearers. Please, follow me." She turned away quickly, but not so quickly that the tears overflowing down her cheeks went unseen. Still numbed from the proceedings, the whole group trooped obediently after her, the fairy-like newcomers fluttering along near Cynthia's shoulders on their rainbow wings.

Sylia had slept poorly that night, dreaming again of her childhood only to wake around 3 AM and be unable to go back to sleep. Suddenly, the dreams and the voice she'd heard connected in her mind, and she slipped a robe on over her nightie before heading to the computer room to do some investigating. *An old childhood friend... Wiz Daycare... Someone once close to me, but now living a different path... it fits! But who? I never knew their last names...*

She didn't really want to believe that one of the children who'd been her best friends at five was now a mortal enemy. Genom was dirty, without question, but the majority of its operations, and employees, were aboveboard and blameless. It was the main reason she hadn't just hired mercenaries herself, and set them to outright destruction of its assets - it wouldn't have been any more expensive than creating, building, and maintaining an entirely new, advanced technology and personally leading a group of her own in damage control operations until they could find a way to cut out the rot without hurting the (relatively) innocent. She knew, she'd looked at the numbers before starting construction of the first hardsuit.

Some hours later, Priss too rose, and wandered drowsily into the common kitchen area, almost identical to the one in the old headquarters even to the bay windows, though these faced west overlooking the Ishioka horse field rather than south to Genom Tower. The singer had risen from her own uneasy dreams. It wasn't so much that she'd had three of her least favorite nightmares in succession, but somehow, just as they got to the point she'd normally wake up in terror, that stupid little soap bubble would drift through the scene, with one of her songs audible in the background, and then whatever was the terror in the dream would turn out to be some wimpy thing she kicked the shit out of easily... Even the nightmare she'd had after the Aqua City fight had turned into her just wearing that robot-suit in a stereotypical 'flying dream.' She muttered a greeting to Sylia, who didn't seem to notice, then poured herself some tea and grabbed a newsfax printout, hoping for something to take her mind off of lame magic tricks that messed with her head.

Somehow, "WOMAN AND BOY KILLED IN RECONSTRUCTION ACCIDENT" wasn't what she'd been hoping for. Her knuckles turned white as she began to read.

'Ayane Nakagi and her son Sho lost their lives today when they ran back into their former apartment building, scheduled for demolition and replacement by new management. Work was already underway to knock down the structure, and the two were crushed under rubble from the floor above. Genom executive Brian J. Mason, who was on the scene, had this to say. "Truly a tragic accident. Genom will of course cover the funeral arrangements, though I understand she had no other surviving relations."'

"*Mason.*" They both spoke the name at once, Priss angrily, Sylia sadly. "*This ends now!*" Realizing what they'd just done, the two Knight Sabers blinked at each other in surprise, then traded bundles of paper. Sylia read the headlines, then sadly shook her head, seeing only confirmation of what her research seemed to have discovered. Priss scanned the summary of the records of a dozen Wiz Labs (later absorbed by Genom) employees' children from 2014, as they all came to suspiciously young ends, except for Sylia, Mackie, and Brian Mason junior, but didn't see the relevance, beyond the low survival rate. She looked up quizzically as Sylia lay down the newsfax and sighed, "Oh, Brian..."

"Sylia, that man is going down," Priss warned. "Don't try to stop me."

"No, Priss," the dark-haired Saber began. Seeing the singer's expression close again, she continued, "We do it as a team. You get Linna and Nene, while I check the modifications on Linna's old motoslave and the adjustments to their suits. We move immediately."

*Mason...*

Startled, the pale, silver-haired man looked up from the improved superbuma design he was working on, the voice that had disturbed him two nights before echoing again sadly in his ears.

*This ends now!*

Not his ears... The internal diagnostics that he'd only just learned to call up reported that there was no unexpected waveform coming from them. Instead, it seemed to be... A communications system of some kind.

*How interesting,* he thought quietly. Noting that no outgoing signal was indicated as he did so, he smiled coldly. He'd realized Dr. Yoshida had been monitoring some form of augmentation process after the pain had faded and he regained coherent thought, and certainly the metallic beads on his fingertips suggested something of the sort, but the full extent of the changes still were unclear to him... He "pushed" at the status report, trying to make it cover everything.

"Very interesting indeed," he murmured. "If my old friend and her allies are coming to meet me, it would only be polite to greet them."

Quickly, he typed some instructions in his terminal, to have all but a handful of the Security buma clear the access road up the side of Genom tower for a certain set of armored ladies, and had a buma released into one of the districts that Genom was looking to accquire to draw off the ADPolice. Only one more thing remained... He raised a hand, and sighted along it to the large view screen on the far wall of his office, then triggered a mental command.

As shards of the shattered screen rained down over his antique racer, the laughter of a man who'd received his dearest wish rang through the office. A wave of the same hand with outstretched fingers, and a matching wave of lightning leapt from his fingertips to ground itself on the frame of his expensive toy, and soon flakes of scorched paint joined broken glass littering the floor.

*Come then, if you wish to be struck down like dogs!*

From the terminal hooked up to test points on Linna's hardsuit, Sylia bowed her head and sighed, then continued adjusting its programming to compensate for the quicker reactions its pilot had demonstrated in her most recent simulator runs.

Unnoticed in the shadows, the small, spider like shape of Guardian 215's infiltration mode scurried over to Priss's new motoslave, the green visor - configured as an optics turret in this form - glowing slightly as it scanned the unit and its attached cannon. A significant improvement over the previous model that had been destroyed, but altogether insufficiently armed, with that combustion powered slug-thrower. The faint sound covered by the clicks and ratcheting of the Knight Commander replacing maintenance hatches on one of the Knight Companions' personal combat suits, it extended cutting edges and sliced away the offending piece of artillery, keeping only the barrel for camouflage and stuffing the rest of the weapon's pieces into shunt space as it shifted and flowed to replace the body of the weapon, hanging from the side of the cycle-form motoslave as if nothing had changed.

The blocky grey mass of the Knight Sabers' semi rolled through the early morning dark, the road fairly clear in advance of the morning rush hour. The side bay doors opened as it took the exit to the Genom access road, and Priss and Linna, on their new motoslaves, rode the extendable arms out to be dropped off, speeding ahead of the truck to clear a path. A moment later, the pink saber, in a newly repainted motoslave, followed suit, but shifted to battle frame mode and flew close cover for the truck instead of ranging ahead, while the white saber jumped out of a hatch in the roof of the trailer and landed in a crouch a few feet back from it, waiting for the moment to go into action.

Priss and Linna rolled up the long, spiraling access road on the lookout for Genom security, but oddly enough there didn't seem to be any in evidence for nearly a minute. Then, a pair of BU-12Bs, the same type of buma that had wrecked the Silky Doll and had been buried under the Lady 633 building, flew down the road to attack. Priss popped a wheelie and rode over one, as she'd ridden over a blue buma on a regular motorcycle not too far in the past, while the second caught Linna with an outstretched arm, knocking her from the motoslave's saddle with a classic clothesline. She recovered quickly, jetting high and spinning to face backwards as her new motoslave shifted to independent combat mode to catch her, firing over its shoulder at the BU-12 that had tagged her, while the other circled through the sky to catch up to Priss.

As the motoslave came to a stop, Linna leapt out of its arms, freeing them to unsling its cannon to take a shot at the buma and blow its shield arm out of position, allowing her to jump in close and kick it off balance. She pushed off from its chest to leap high and use her knuckle bombers on the upper shell. She had planned to aim for the base of the eyestalks, like the first time, but suddenly a place on the curved carapace of the head, a few inches back from the edge, seemed to light up like a bullseye to her, and she slammed it there instead. The knuckle bombers went off with their usual jolt, but unlike the last time she'd used them on one of these instead of just rattling it and springing a seam the entire top of the carapace crumpled in, cracks radiating from the impact point, concussion and internally spalling armor chips destroying its brain. Dead, the buma dropped, and Linna rejoined her motoslave, linking to it in battle frame mode before taking to the air and flying to see how Priss's battle was going.

"Leon!" Daley Wong called to his partner from their squad car, where he'd been monitoring the radio. "There's some kind of running fire fight on the side of the Genom building, hardsuits versus military buma!"

"Hardsuits!" Turning from where three K-11s had cornered the rogue combat buma and were hosing it down with their vulcans, Leon jogged over to be able to hear over the noise. "Call for one of the choppers to land on the -", pausing for an instant, he glanced at the company sign on the side of the intact office block behind them, "- the Nakasuma building to pick me up. You can handle the cleanup here, we're almost through with the messy part." As if to punctuate that statement, the buma's power supply exploded, taking it out of commission, and the officers manning the barricade let up a hail of cheers.

"Where are you going?", asked Daley. "Not another man, I hope."

"Can it, Daley, I've gotta check this Genom thing out." Taking the brushoff with his usual good humor - it was as much a joke between them as anything else - Daley watched his partner head for the entrance of the office building for a moment before hoisting himself out of the car and setting to work organizing the cleanup and after-action assessments.

Priss too had shifted to battle frame mode, landing the motoslave and bringing up its autocannon to firing position. As the second BU-12B flew into sight around the curve of the tower, she fired twice, blowing off its weapon-arm and the opposite eyestalk, before remembering that the new, high power cannon only carried two rounds instead of the fifteen of the older one's autocannon. "Shit, now what?" she cursed, as the buma closed in to attack physically.

She was very surprised when the rifle's targeting display blinked off, and the barrel dropped off of the body of the gun, but not so much as when four slim vanes extended to replace it, and a new pipper - more of a wire frame cylinder indicating the fire path drawn into the space ahead of her than a normal crosshair - popped up. She snarled and did her best to center the buma in the targeting circle, the matching diameter lock-mark on the buma helping to line it up, then pulled the trigger, hoping that whatever the hell was up with the rifle it would still make nice big holes like it was supposed to. For just an instant there was a crackle of energy buildup around the four vane "barrel", then a brilliant white beam lanced through the buma like a pinned butterfly, melting a gaping hole around itself before the buma's powerplant exploded. "Now that's a nice big hole," she gloated. "Nothing like an absence of buma to make *me* happy."

Nene and Sylia landed on the top plateau of Genom Tower, Nene in the motoslave, a few feet to the side and behind her leader, immediately bringing up the autocannon to cover Mason and his hulking security guards - both assuredly buma, but still in human guise. His cold smirk gave an otherwise attractive face a menacing look, as the white-suited Saber warned, "There's nowhere to run, Mr. Mason. You look as if you've resigned yourself to that."

The smirk grew to a smile before he confidently replied, "what you see is the look of the victor, here on the heights of Genom. Here where I will rule, and where you will DIE!"

On that signal, the security buma burst out of their disguises, revealing themselves to be 55C combat models, and leapt for the motoslave on trails of thruster fire, dodging the bursts Nene fired at them while keeping her occupied so she couldn't help Saber White. For her part, Sylia found her considerable speed to be no match for Mason, who danced around her energized blade without getting so much as a scorch or tear in his suit before slamming a fist into her gut, sending the lead Saber flipping backwards to catch herself on her thrusters and fly toward the ledge of a nearby stairwell.

With a smug snarl, he flung out a hand and blasted her landing point with an invisible wave of force, pulverizing the ledge and forcing her to hang in the air long enough to clip the wings from her flight pack with another blast. As she fell to the floor level, he dashed over and caught the falling hardsuit by the helmet, slamming it backwards into the wall and using the moment she was stunned from that hit to open the visor.

"Sylia!", he gloated. "I knew it was you! I knew as soon as you dropped a building on my buma, and I would have found out your friends soon enough. Ah ah ah," he scolded, catching up her hardsuit's arm before the saber could be reactivated. "None of that! I wouldn't want to have to get rough with my oldest friend."

Using her arm as leverage, he swung Sylia around to slam into the wall again, face first, then flung her away to land in a heap.

"HaaaAAAAAH!" Mason leapt and threw another crushing punch as he landed, opening cracks in the armor of Sylia's hardsuit.

A dozen feet away, Nene and the rather battered looking motoroid had separated to each take on one of the buma, as two-on-one they were overmatched even with the battle frame's power. She was doing considerably better than it was, the agility and balance improvements of her recent training showing exceptional results, as she bounced in and out of reach, keeping the much more massive buma too busy moving to set itself and use a ranged weapon, while the pink saber kept tagging it with her newly upgraded laser, whittling away until finally she broke through the thinner throat armor and damaged its mouth laser, which promptly exploded and blew its head off.

Unfortunately for her, that was also about the time that the second buma managed to catch the motoroid in a heat beam and it slumped to the ground, joints locked and armor melting. She caught the cyberdroid with a boosted kick to the head before it could reorient, but had quite a bit of fight left before defeating it.

Mason meanwhile had spread his hands like some obscene benediction and blasted Sylia with wave after wave of electricity, waiting for her agonized screams to die down before sending the next bolt, taking the time to between blasts to gloat. "This may hurt a bit now..." "but you'll thank me for it later." "You and I are two of a kind, you see." "And if that which does not kill you makes you stronger... " "then that which comes close will make you a god!"

Sylia couldn't do much more than thrash uncontrollably as the current surged through her, even though most of it merely played over her armor and dissipated there was still plenty of juice to do the job. She didn't even realize that he was speaking, let alone understand the words. A reedy whine of agony escaped her throat as her back arched in pain, until with a sickly crunch she fell silent. Mason finally relented and stood over her, arms crossed as he chuckled.

Eyes narrowed, he spun suddenly, the sound of thrusters warning of new arrivals on the rooftop, and he dodged aside as a pair of charged monoribbons whistled through his former position. He grabbed them as their cutting energies died down, yanking Saber Green back and flipping her overhead to slam into the ground, following up with a force blast that sent her sliding into the already battered stairwell wall.

Nene finished off her other buma and bounced past him, scooping a moaning Sylia off the ground and jump jetting away down the face of the cone-shaped Tower, to the truck waiting far below. With her advanced sensors, she could tell that the white Saber's heart had stopped, and after Sylia herself the only one of the team with more than the most basic medical skill was Mackie. She could only hope it wouldn't be too late.

"NO!", Mason bellowed, in his mind already a god come to earth, and Sylia his perfect match. "YOU WILL NOT STEAL -!"

"Get a clue, you BASTARD!", Priss advised, as she and her motoslave battle frame came at him in an awkward flying kick - even the new model was not really optimized for hand to hand combat.

He easily dodged, and threw a boosted punch at Linna, following Priss in from a low angle. He didn't expect her to meet it with the knuckle bombers, however, and he drew back in agony, the entire arm a shredded ruin of torn flesh, metal cables, and red blood, before it exploded and knocked him to his knees.

Priss circled back up to the rooftop in the motoslave, landing beside Linna as Mason staggered back to his feet. "Fools!", he cursed them. "Do you think you have defeated me? All you have accomplished is to force me to use the ultimate weapon!" Mason's eyes changed, literally with the blink of an eye, from odd but human to the metal orbs and red lenses of a buma, glowing ominously as he laid in a targeting solution. "Take a deep breath, Knight Sabers!", he taunted. "It will be your last!"

After its one shot, Guardian 215 had been willing to spend the rest of the battle riding at the ready position, still masquerading as Priss's cannon unless further action was required. As Her Highness had acquitted herself well enough on her own, it had remained hidden. When the signals previously identified as controlling orbital strike weaponry began to lock onto Her position, however, it could no longer remain passive; fond of it though she might be the antiquated personal combat suit she was currently using was insufficient to withstand such a weapon, and even the Guardian itself would not escape unharmed. Flowing and retrieving much of its mass from shunt space, 215 invaded the control systems of the motoslave and made it release Her, replacing the inferior mechanoid as a battle frame around her personal unit, and extending a secondary manipulator to grab the remaining Knight Companion and toss her out of harm's way. Her Highness herself was too far from the edge of the target zone to make it out and became a dark smudge in the heart of an artificial star.

Even as the beam hit, running off of a bubble of force that sprang up unexpectedly, 215 was forming the most powerful weapon it could without a direct request, a set of small, black, knifelike missile spines that extended from between one set of the more conventional rail-blades forming a heavy gauntlet over each lower arm of its battle frame mode. Awaiting a target lock and the command to fire, it analyzed the field that had formed around Her Highness to ward off the energy beam, and noted that the effect was similar to the 'psychic' barriers used by some figures in the broadcast video signals it had monitored since concluding that its Partner was experiencing psychological distress at its presence, in an attempt to rebuild the baseline behavioral database lost to file corruption. However, those segments had demonstrated such wildly anomalous input that they had been statistically excluded from the data set, as probable exaggeration or outright fiction. Her Highness had not been observed to have such abilities previously, however. Furthermore, the energy seemed to be coming from some external source, though investigation would have to be continued after the battle.

As soon as Mason's eyes began to glow, Priss got a bad feeling, and as her motoslave lurched and then dumped her out she got more than enough confirmation that something was FUBAR. Before she could hit the ground, she was snatched up again and she could feel something wrapping around her hardsuit like a battle frame, though nothing in the Sabers inventory would be covering her field of view. Suddenly, an all too familiar grid of glowing yellow crisscrossed the armor that had shut off her line of sight, and an image formed over them just as her hardsuit reported successful linkage to a "Guardian Battle Frame." The image was oddly washed out and blurry, as if viewed through a sheet of water, but then the effect faded and she realized that she'd been right in the center of a particle beam from the satellites overhead.

"Goddammit," she growled, "Not you again, you walking scrap heap..." No answer was forthcoming, save a targeting display bracketing the flabbergasted Mason with a red lock reticule. "GrrrrrrrAAAGH! Fine, blast him then, damn you, but don't wait for me to help you do it!"

Apparently that was good enough for the "battle frame" around her, because the outstretched right arm of the battle frame glowed ever so briefly with an energy corona as power was fed to four tiny black blades, the space-warping field generators within each one projecting them forward at close to lightspeed with no back blast or counter-reaction. The warp fields preserved their structural integrity until they reached the Kanto mountain range on the horizon, even Mason's reinforced body too soft a target to disrupt them. Four stabbing fingers of friction-generated plasma traced their courses, and the impacts each created a miniature mushroom cloud as kinetic energy was converted to heat. Fortunately, most of the velocity was lost as the warp fields collapsed, so that even the combined yield was only equal to a largish conventional explosive. The plasma tubes themselves were a dangerous weapon however, spreading in an instant to bathe the Genom exec in a fiery hell storm and scorching a wide swath across the top of the Tower. When the plasma dispersed, amazingly, he was still shakily on his feet, eye sockets empty and mouth gaping in a silent scream as the organic tissue sheathing the various technological workings of his augmented innards burned fiercely away, four six inch holes punched through his chest and upper abdomen.

"Dear kami..." gasped Linna. "How can he still be standing?"

"Don't ask Kami, he's dead, remember?", Priss replied. "And he probably couldn't tell you either. I know I damn sure can't."

The crack of high-caliber pistol broke their stunned silence, the impact of the slug on his forehead destroying the nebulous balance of the standing metal corpse, and sending it plunging over the side of the roof to bounce and roll the thousands of feet to the Tower's base. Turning, the two Sabers saw Leon with his Ruger Redhawk in hand, smoking with the traces of recent firing as he leaned out of the side door of an ADP heliplane.

Before anything could be said, Nene's worried voice came over the scrambled suit radios, pleading, "Hurry up, you two, we've got to get going NOW!" At almost the same moment, an explosion on the far side of the Tower rooftop heralded the destruction of Linna's motoroid, which had been set on guard against more buma showing up; combined the two were plenty of incentive for Priss and Linna to begin jump jetting down the sloping side of the enormous building themselves, to the Mobile HQ truck still circling on the ground-level highway below. Everyone aboard, it merged into the stream of similar trucks driving through the industrial district and was lost.

"Should we just let them go like that, Leon?" the aerodyne pilot asked. "I mean, they just attacked Genom Tower..."

"For now, yes." the ADPolice Inspector replied. "Because I'm more worried about what they were fighting. Land so we can document the scene. I'm not letting Genom sweep a new, human looking combat buma under the carpet if I can help it." The rising sun caught on the frame of his sunglasses as he slipped them on, moving back from the doorway of the chopper while it maneuvered in for a landing, finding a clear area in the ongoing construction of the already enormous structure.

* * *

><p>Next time on Bubblegum Disaster: Jump start my heart...<p>

* * *

><p>Damn, Ryoga's umbrella is pretty light in the future, hey? - No, that's just not Ryoga's umbrella. It's one Linna made from the scroll he left her describing how to, along with the sword-belt and the instructions for the shi-shi-hokodan, and observations of Ranma's variant on it. I have no idea what Ryoga's would be made out of to be as heavy as it's shown in the manga when the Furinkan students are trying to pick it up; IRL it took a solid bar of steel three inches in diameter and two and a half feet long before I (an average-strength highschooler at the time, or perhaps a bit above) had to strain to lift it two-handed, and while Ryoga's brolly is closer to a foot longer than that it's both thinner and has a significant amount of empty space in the folds of the canopy. Maybe some lasting energy charge technique? Anyway, since Linna was somehow provided with a more normal childhood than the typical cast-member in Ranma 12, she wasn't enough of a martial arts freak to have the strength training needed to actually use it unaided. I know how this happened (it's a good two pages in my plot points file), but I mean to show, not tell, especially not in the Author's Notes.

Chasing a buma in a VAN? This van is FAST, foo'!

To see exactly what the portals the Kagamis use look like, get a copy of Slayers Movie #1, featuring Lina and Naga on a 'mysterious resort island' - the mazoku Joyluck uses the same effect.

Dykstra Field Theory: The scientific explanation of about half of Ki, (leaving out the spiritual aspects, the "magic", that make it most useful) which allows for the tightness of the beams of plasma weapons, the bumas' heat rays, controlled micro fusion generators, etc., and theoretically allows for antigravity, force shields, and FTL if the math could be applied to hardware successfully. So far, it hasn't on earth, though a fair amount of Guardian 215's more spectacular powers use it - the concussion blasts, more powerful energy attacks, and antigravity lift rings.

Sylia's other questions: What is the meaning of life? (42) Who was my friend? (Andy the Invisible Anteater, her imaginary friend she never told anyone about) Are my parents together? (They're both dead, but are buried separately, since Dr. Stingray was buried with his wife and Sylia is from her previous marriage.)

You may wonder how Mason could be on the data cartridge Sylia's father gave her, shooting him as an adult, if he was in the daycare center as a child at the same approximate time. That wasn't Brian J. Mason, it was his father, Brian M. Mason, who is also known as Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Film.

And if you think that end battle was something, wait until you see the real fight with Largo in a few more chapters.

The 'rail-blade' gauntlets on 215's battle frame mode are effectively identical to the 'head dress' on the Largo buma Priss fights at the end of Bubblegum Crash, except of course for having a few warp blades hidden among them. The warp blades themselves are about four inches long, 3/8ths inch at the widest point, but only about 1/8th inch thick; they have a wasp waist section about halfway down their length, a crystalline nose cone, and a narrow oval and center pip on each side of the front section that exposes more of the same red-purple crystalline material. If you have ever seen the stylus that comes with the 540 series Jornada palmtops from Hewlett Packard, that is precisely what I am basing them on.

Guardian 215 should be imagined with the vocal talents of Susan Blu; if you don't know her by name, she did (among other shows) Arcee on the post-movie Transformers episodes, as well as in the movie itself. You can even keep the flanging effect if you like, though it's not really there.

Many thanks to my pre readers: Patricia Kostan, Nathan Baxter, Hide Hasegawa, Leong Mun Yee, and Kaitlin Coelho.

Bubblegum Crisis belongs to Youmex and Animeigo, I make no claims otherwise. Please don't sue me, I have no money to speak of and fanfic does more to promote your products than anything else I know of - without it, I never would have known about anime at all, and I'd certainly never have bought the BGC tapes based on the sucky box copy.

Ranma 1/2 I'm not so sure of, except that the creator was Rumiko Takahashi, not me, and that I make no claims to own IT either. Likewise, Dragon Ball was created by Akira Toriyama, and is distributed in the US on video by FUNimation. I THINK that both Ranma and Dragonball comics are done by Viz in the US, but that may be incorrect.

I haven't a clue who owns Ah! Megami-sama! except that it's not me.

-  
>OMAKE TIME!<br>-

Seeing this last thing done, the former Kami-sama let his eyes close, his hair rapidly turning steely, then grey, then stark white as his features aged decades in the span of seconds, his face becoming gaunt and withered, as the century and a half since his birth would normally be due. Bell sadly pulled the sheet back up to his chin, the peaceful expression on the ancient face asleep.

"Ya should leave now, or like, you'll wake him up," she informed them, Valley Girl accent mangling the words horribly, "I'll like, cast some spell to get you home or something, okay?" She turned away quickly, but not so quickly that the telltale sings of censors' airbrushing couldn't be seen on her face. Still numb from the script editing, the whole group trooped obediently after her, Huggy Mazinbear trundling along on stubby panda hind legs while Cynthia held its forepaw.

Hold it! Who the hell let the FUNimation dubbing crew in here? Get those idiots out of my studio, before I have to break out the fuchikomas!

(Editor's note - Huggy Mazinbear was later replaced by Yuki and Hotaru, as Lesser Mazinger and Tiny Robo were introduced in Eyrie Productions' _Symphony of the Sword_ before I posted this.)

EOF


	5. Chapter 3 EX 1

05_BD_WOASS_Ch_03_EX1

2010-10-29 - fixed minor but annoying gremlins  
>2008-08-11 - removed a note that somehow snuck in five chapters early<br>1-12-2005 - single-word change for continuity  
>12-12-2004 - minor grammar and phrasing fixes<br>6/07/2004 - fixed a minor plot hole (extra set of sonic blasters)

Cynthia awoke, surprised - not at having been awakened by something in her surroundings, or even at having dreamt, but that she'd fallen asleep at all, having slept the night before for hours. She normally only needed an hour's sleep every two or three days, but she'd been playing with Yuki and Hotaru and just got so tired out...

From her position curled up with her on the couch, Yuki moved again, patting Cynthia's cheek to gain attention, and her bell-like voice tinkled softly as Hotaru also stirred. An image came to her mind, like the satellite pictures she was used to, but different, and somehow she was certain it was being sent to her by her miniature double.

Yuki's little voice rang out again, confirming the thought, then the picture zoomed smoothly in on the city, near the center, where explosions rose from Genom tower in the predawn light, rapidly resolving into her friends in their bright armor suits fighting with more of the scary buma.

She snuggled them close, wings retracted out of the way, as she saw a man dodging around Miss Sylia - Cecilia except in private, she remembered - and then hitting her, looking like he was hurting her a lot despite the armor. He leapt at her as she fell, and a strange energy flared around one fist and discharged as he slammed it down, leaving the white-suited Saber the center of a ring of cracks, then rebounding away again. The unknown man held out his arms, and a soft fan of light spread from them to the area around Cecilia's body, still lying stunned where she'd fallen. An instant later, writhing bolts of lightning leapt across it, following the glow like a bridge before grounding out through Sylia and her armored suit. He did it again and again, before the glowing fan dispersed and he folded his arms triumphantly. Somehow, Sylia herself seemed to have fallen under a shadow, though the early morning twilight was unchanged, and the construction flood lamps illuminating the scene still undamaged.

The overhead viewpoint easily let her see Priss and Linna coming at him from behind, even before he noticed and spun away from the singer in her red battle frame, only to have his following strike met by Linna, his arm detonating messily. "Oh no! No, do you have to hurt him back?" the little blond girl cried as she watched, her normal sight searching Yuki's tiny face, grey eyes looking softly back at her. For just a moment the view in her mind zoomed in closer, showing the metal wreckage hanging from his shoulder, before sweeping back out and away from the bloody mess. She'd seen such things before of course, in her sky-pictures, but always tried to avoid them. Turning her mind from unpleasant memories, Cynthia watched while Nene scooped up her fallen leader and bounded away down the building. At the same time, a thin beam of light stretched up from the man past her viewpoint, somehow instantly recognizable as directing the orbiting satellite weapons despite not giving her the feeling she'd come to recognize as being related to them.

Indeed, as she tried to reach out to the satellites herself and block the commands, she couldn't find the connection, and her eyes snapped wide in horror. "Oh Yuki, what's wrong? I can't stop him..."

Again the dolls' voices sounded, and for just a moment the internal vision dimmed, replaced by traces and shapes of light... Things that should have been meaningless, but somehow made sense. Nodding, Hotaru snuggled up to her again, and the vision returned, a circle of the satellite's target area appearing around Priss even as her battle frame released her and another sprang up from nowhere to take its place, a strangely shaped arm flicking out of its back to shove Linna out of the target zone at the same time. Her view swiveled slightly, moving to the side to look down and at an angle, and with a small grunt of concentration she added her own dome of light over the blue-suited singer and her still-forming blue and gold battle frame, just in time for the satellite's energy blast to slam out of the sky and flow around it, leaving a scorched, melted trench in a circle around her friend. Before the man could react, four tiny missiles surrounded in pockets of energy and trailing shock cones so hot and elongated they seemed like energy beams themselves reached out from the new battle frame, and she 'tuned out' the vision rather than watch him be destroyed, burying her tears in her arms and the two living dolls couched there.

Bewilderbeast Studios Present

BUBBLEGUM DISASTER

Season One

WISHES ON A SHOOTING STAR

A work of BGC fan fiction by ClassicDrogn

Chapter Three EX

Continuity note: Several of the segments in this part overlap timewise; hopefully it should be clear enough which ones and how much without having to interrupt the text for notes to explicitly state it, because I'm not going to do so.

Dr. Timothy Thomas Vector, known to friends as T.T., was more widely known as the constant companion of globe-hopping playgirl Cecilia Ishioka-Wayne; indeed he was generally far more visible in society than the lady herself, who seemed to possess a magical talent for vanishing into thin air on a whim. Within the medical community he was also known to be a talented physician in several fields normally the playground of specialists, perhaps not the world's best in any of them but the greatest combination of general medicine, opthamology, endocrinology, chiropractic medicine, biomimetic cybernetics, and psychoneurology to be had in a group of less than three. He was also rather infatuated with the lifestyle afforded by being on permanent retainer, giving or attending seminars and lectures whenever he happened to be convenient to one, but otherwise living it up with high society, and often the only real sign that his patroness might be in town. It was no surprise then that he had been seen in the past week alone at a charity banquet, an antique auto show, and a seminar on the latest methods of controlling the psychological effects of cybernetic prostheses, while Ms. Ishioka-Wayne had been utterly invisible for close to a month.

It did come as a surprise when the discussion at breakfast the morning after that seminar was interrupted by a rather strident wireless phone, alternating three short and two long electronic screeches in its Emergency cadence. Without another word, he set down his orange juice, handed the waiter a 200 zenii bill, and jogged briskly to the hotel doors to have his car brought up, answering the ring as he impatiently waited for the valet.

"Where?" he demanded, nodding sharply as the caller replied. "Right. I'll be there in fifteen minutes. What happened?" Megatokyo high society would be abuzz with rumors for the following week, as he was seen to jerk and shout, "Good lord!" before sprinting out the doors and towards the parking garage, intercepting his classic, namesake sports car halfway to the entrance and tossing the valet out with a wad of bills before burning rubber out of the entryway, swerving immediately into traffic and away.

A Security buma met Leon as the heliplane landed, having taken a quick circuit of the roof to record as much of the scene as possible on its camera. In no mood for obstructionist mechanoids, Leon was already waving his badge in its green-painted face. Before it could begin protesting, he barked, "Inspector Leon McNichols, AD Police! This is a crime scene, and I'm just waiting for the chance to charge Genom with obstruction of justice!"

Rather than the synthesized voice of a buma, however, a deep, cultured baritone replied from the battered stairwell, accompanied by soft footsteps and the click of a cane. "Now now, inspector, there is no need for such hostility. I'm sure Genom security will cooperate fully in investigating this criminal attack upon our premises." Chairman Quincy paused at the doorway of the stairwell, nudging aside the fallen door with a foot while a pair of bodyguards flowed around him and took positions to either side. He nodded affably to the security buma, redirecting attention back to it.

Obeying the cue, the brown and green buma calmly stated, "I'm sorry sir, but this is a construction area, no one is permitted access without a helmet."

"There, you see, Inspector. There is no cause for alarm." Leon turned back to find the rather incongruous sight of the Chairman of Genom, with his gold-tipped cane and $5,000 suit, wearing a standard yellow construction helmet. One of the bodyguards, headgear conspicuously absent, tossed another to the policeman, with only a little unnecessary force.

"Alright," Leon agreed, adjusting the band of the helmet to fit. His face and voice were neutral as he continued, "I don't imply any personal accusations at this time, of course, Mr. Chairman." Hard nose tough guy or not, even Leon knew better than to antagonize Quincy without having solid proof.

The executive's face remained in its pleasant, inexpressive mask as he replied, "Of course, Inspector. I have no doubt of the integrity and rigorous nature of AD Police investigative practices."

Behind his sunglasses, Leon's eyes narrowed, *I'll bet you don't,* he thought, *You probably know exactly how much real police work is compromised, evidence destroyed, and life lost in the name of covering up for Genom.* Unfortunately, he was running out of things to say that wouldn't be likely to add himself to those statistics, and running out of the patience to hold back despite that.

The moment was broken by the sound of another set of footsteps mounting the staircase, soon followed by Kate Madigan joining their little group, the constant wind blowing her hair across her face for a moment as she produced a video cartridge. "I have the security recorrding as you rrequested, sir," she reported.

"Very good, Miss Madigan," the Chairman rumbled. Addressing the nonplussed inspector, he continued, "It's unfortunate, that the main cluster of security cameras in this area were destroyed almost immediately." He pointed his cane at a twisted pile of metal and rubble at the base of the stairwell structure, a broken lens assembly prominent on one side.

"Oh yes, unfortunate," Leon repeated, his tone belying the insincerity he felt. Still, he accepted the cartridge as the purple-tressed woman handed it to him.

"And now, I have things I must attend to, if that is acceptable Inspector," the Chairman asked, though the tone suggested that it had better be acceptable or else. He continued, "Miss Madigan will remain with you to assist the investigation and open any doors, as it were."

Quickly hiding a scowl, Leon replied, "Of course, Mr. Chairman, I'm sure that will be fine. If we need a statement later I'll have her send it to your office, then?"

"Indeed." Quincy doffed his hard hat and passed it to one of his hulking bodyguards as he returned to the stairwell, sounding vaguely amused. Before following his master downstairs the bruiser growled, crushed the aluminum cap into a small ball, and dropped it to clank against the rubble, while the second guard stayed with the irritated-looking female exec.

Mouthing a silent curse, Leon slipped his sunglasses into a pocket and headed over to greet the other officers arriving in a squad copter before they ran roughshod all over *his* crime scene. He noted sourly that no protests were being made about 'proper headgear'.

Madigan waited until the Inspector's back was turned to finally let loose a yawn and give him an annoyed glare, but soon enough schooled her features and followed smoothly over to the small knot of officers.

After the truck's uncertain start, Linna had quickly switched off with Nene in the cab, as she actually had some notion of how to drive a vehicle that large. Mackie was far too busy restarting his sister's heart and freaking out about how her body had flopped limply when the hardsuit release was triggered, having barely even managed to call for the team's private doctor.

By contrast, Priss was building up to a berserker rage, the focus of her anger being the Guardian unit and its dogged persistence in following her around. She'd persuaded it to separate from Battle Frame mode as soon as they'd gotten underway, then stomped over to the small stack of still-loaded equipment from their recent move, unceremoniously toppling it and heaving out the wing pack prototype. She stripped it out of the protective frame, snapped in the gatling ammo drum, and filled the fuel tank from the motoslave servicing station. Still growling and muttering imprecations, she hefted it to her shoulders and let it clamp into place before slapping the control to open the trailer roof and grabbing the humanoid-form Guardian by a shoulder, blasting off as the truck passed under a highway ramp with a growled, "Come on, you piece of scrap! This ends tonight!"

]ANALYSIS OF MODULAR UNIT INDICATES MARGINAL LIFT TO LOAD RATIO. ASSUME INDEPENDENT FLIGHT MODE.

The turbine's strained roar tapered off, and the variable geometry wings repositioned themselves for the altered balance as Priss felt her handhold vanish under her fingers, the Guardian dropping only a few feet before popping a pair of rings, each perhaps sixteen inches in outer diameter and of a flattened, D-shape section, the upright of the D being toward the inner hole. These positioned themselves on a pair of struts similar to where a motoslave's lift fans would be mounted, and powered up with a soft blue glow from various gaps in the outer shell and the inside rim.

Circling sharply with feet pulled up into a crouch against the g-force the irate singer snarled, "You don't get away that easily!" and let fly with the vulcan, a similar model to the one carried by ADP Firebees but with more powerful ammunition. The glow of the lift rings flared as the Guardian swerved, and a short hail of precise pulse blasts deflected those rounds that didn't swing wide of the dodge.

"Your Highness, please! This unit's only function is to serve and protect your person! You simply must-"

"Protect THIS, BUMA!", Priss shouted as she charged, rapid-fire railspikes leading the way. Half of them were dodged, another snatched out of the air by a rippling pulse-bolt, but the remaining three struck true, two snapping the Guardian's left lift ring off of its strut and the last spearing it again though the optic band. Off balance and blinded, the robot fell into a steep dive that became a waterfall plummet as components were shifted to and from shuntspace and rearranged.

The wing pack's servomotors groaned as the blue suited Knight Saber forced it to snap-roll into position to fire the vulcan again. The stream of firepower reached out, a mix of heavy armor piercing rounds that cracked and shattered unscreened ceramic armor and explosives that tore away the Guardian's nanite swarm and insecurely bonded components. Unable to get itself into a coherent flight mode, 215's amorphous mass splashed against a microwave communication dish and the majority of it broke away, scattering into discrete blocks and subassemblies followed by a grainy silver cloud of inactive nanites scattering to the wind and the wreckage of the Kanto Canyons below. Catching up with the largest remaining chunk of the alien robot, Priss gave it a last hit with the impact blaster in her weapon gauntlet before pulling up and heading back to the Mobile HQ.

"This time you'd better stay dead, you sunuvabitch," she muttered as she flew off into the new day's light.

In space, it doesn't matter when you sleep.

There are things that must always have SOMEONE watching them, certainly, and a regular sleep cycle is required as much as in any planetary situation for human personnel, but the timing of that cycle becomes a matter of opinion rather than being based on an actual day and night rotation when a spinning station revolves in a matter of hours and one with the recently developed artificial gravity needn't spin at all. Nevertheless, the pack instinct of humans still led the majority of station personnel to have a common "night" shift, when they slept, with only a minimal crew active to oversee the buma keeping track of the various critical functions.

The practical result of this was that Meg had been able to hack herself and Nam some unassigned time in the middle of the 'night' and reroute the security monitors on one of the 1G gymnasiums so the two of them could test the 35a mobility and combat software she'd acquired for them, to take advantage of the advanced, 35a style myomers the two of them were built with but didn't have the code to use to full potential.

"I'll go first," Meg instructed, "since it was my idea to do this. Everything should be fine, but if not... well, at least there's a chance you can do something about it since Maintenance is your primary duty skill set."

The purple-haired sexaroid bit her lip, asking, "Is it really that dangerous Meg? Maybe we shouldn't..."

Her own red hair tossed as Meg shook her head. "No, it's just that I'm covering possibilities. It shouldn't be any different than the usual duty upgrade; I even used the standard installer you got me a copy of for you. Now, here goes nothing..."

Meg set the gym bag she'd brought down on a bench, closed her eyes, and passed a command to her internal operating system. She released a deep breath, and shifted her stance slightly, feet a bit more apart, knees just noticeably bent, shoulders back. *Somehow, she suddenly _looks_ dangerous,* thought Nam, *even though she's barely moved at all.*

Opening her eyes again, the redhead gave her companion a reassuring grin before taking a long, gliding step over to a large sandbag and letting fly with a probing series of punches and kicks. She was faintly surprised to see that despite seeming to move at her normal speed, the bag was reacting as if it didn't have time to recover between hits, knocked further and further off center until she paused, only to watch it swing sedately up to smack into the fixture holding it and burst.

To Nam, it was as if her friend had blurred across the space between herself and the bag, then opened up on it with a machine-gun - at least, to judge by the sound of her hits striking the synthetic leather. The crack as it split and the hiss of falling sand were barely audible in the the lingering echoes bouncing through the gymnasium.

"What the... Wow!" Meg was dumbfounded as she watched the grains fall, suddenly realizing why they seemed to be so slow, and why she felt so light on her feet. Before too much sand could escape, however, she reached up and unhooked the bag, its weight great but manageable - that at least she'd expected, having calculated the force her late-model construction could exert without software limitations. Grabbing the bottom of the sandbag, she lifted it so no more sand would escape, and carried it over to the wall where it would be out of the way for the moment. That done, she decided to test just how fast she was, and turned to face along the oval track around the perimeter of the cavernous room.

Five laps around the track would be one mile. She completed those five laps in just over a minute, and decided to stop jogging. The second and third miles took about the same amount of time, combined. Nicely warmed up, she sprinted the fourth, and completed it in just under fifteen seconds... translating to a blistering 250 mph; the slipstream of her passage alone kicked up a short-lived dust storm that cleared away the spilled sand and left Meg panting for breath as it settled again.

Peering at her friend with wide eyes from where she'd clung to a weight machine, Nam gasped, "Will... will I be able to do that?"

"Yes," Meg panted, "you should... be just as fast. But... it's dangerous... until we can... fix our blood supply... I've got nutrient deficiency warnings... from just about every system... right now." Straightening from her hunched-over position, she got her breathing somewhat under control, then instructed, "Go ahead and activate the upgrade, but just do one lap, and take it easy - I'm going to need a major checkup, and that'll be suspicious enough without both if us needing one. Then... there's one other thing, if you're willing to try."

Somewhat shakily, the purple-haired sexaroid stepped away from her anchor, and took a deep breath before closing her own eyes. Her stance, too, shifted, and Meg's movements were no longer blurring as she retrieved her gym bag and checked on its contents. Firming her resolve, Nam walked evenly over to the track, and jogged a quick lap, matching Meg's first time closely. She ran a quick diagnostic, and noted the internal strain that even that little effort had cost her. She frowned, and softly said, "I see what you mean about our systems... what is the other thing you wanted to try?"

Rather than answer directly, Meg emptied her bag onto the bench, revealing two odd, angular metal parts and a wide, gunmetal blue wrist band, as well as a small jewelry box. She stared at the pieces for a moment, before lifting her eyes to gaze solemnly at Nam. "I'll understand if you want nothing to do with these," she began, "but from the records you copied for me, only you and Sylvie have the linkage system to use them, and they could make the difference between escape or destruction when the time comes..."

Nam blinked, then realized just what system her friend had to mean. "The superweapon linkage! Meg, WHAT HAVE YOU GOT THERE?" Her face drained, and she backed away a half-step.

"They're sonic blasters," Meg explained. "They were built more to test the link system in its early stages than to actually be used; they're effective enough for our purposes but nonlethal for the most part. Naturally, that wasn't good enough to continue their development." Her flat expression turned to entreaty. "Please, I know that ever using that... hardware you were built with is hard to even contemplate, but just try it out?"

Nam bowed her head, and a single tear trickled slowly down one cheek. "I... I never wanted to do anyone harm, Meg," she said. "I think it goes with being in Bio Maintenance... a *healer*. But... I'll give the ... blasters ... a try, to see if they work... to help gain our freedom." She raised her head, and asked, "What do I do first?"

*Oh Nam, I hate to do this to you... I only hope this won't cost our friendship.* Motioning Nam over, Meg picked up the pair of angled emitters, and released the clip holding them together. She smoothed the shoulders of Nam's jumpsuit, then set them in place, magnetic pads on the underside clinging to contact points just below the skin and locking them in place. The armband was snapped onto Nam's left wrist, and then she opened the jewelry box, showing the contents to her companion. "This ring was meant to be worn by a human test technician, but as long as you put it on the other hand it should work well enough. It has a code chip to activate the link system, which only operates when the band is at body temperature." She pulled out the plain metal ring marked with the triangle-hexagon Genom logo in enamel over the circular housing for the code chip, and slipped it onto her own finger.

Taking Nam's left hand in her right, Meg turned it so the inside face of the wristband was accessible, then slipped the round head of the ring into the matching depression there. "Bio-links on!" she commanded, and a short glimmer of light passed over the components, the purple-tressed buma straightening in shock as the simple interface for the sonic blasters connected with her own neural net, a brief, greenish glow flaring around her as the inductive power supply synchronized.

Cynthia had mostly calmed by the time Mrs. Akimoto returned from a short walk to the farm section for fresh vegetables, and helping the gentle old woman prepare lunch for her husband and his assistant completed the cure for her heavy heart. She'd seen violence through her sky-pictures before, in detail and on a much wider basis than a single man attacking her friends and suffering for it. She'd even followed their adventures stopping the nasty buma that attacked sometimes, like the ones they'd saved her from. Without the intensity of the moment, she was sure that whoever the man had been, he'd been bad like the robot-men who kidnapped her, or he wouldn't have been fighting them and hurting Miss Sylia. "But... I'm like the robot-men too..." she whispered. Surely her friends would only be fighting bad people. It must be all right.

That reminded her, as she nibbled another rice ball, what *had* happened to her friends? She handed a lunch tray to the team of Hotaru and Yuki, who each took a side before extending their wings and taking to the air. Cynthia followed them to the family room with another while Mrs. Akimoto finished up in the kitchen. After carefully placing the trays on the low, traditional table, she quietly asked, "Yuki, you showed me my friends before; do you know where they are now?"

The robotic girl's steely eyes glowed for a moment, and once again Cynthia felt the new remote sense that had replaced her link to the satellites come into focus. It swiftly moved away from the battleground where a small army of ADPolice were now investigating, across the cityscape to a western-style house - a mansion in land-starved Japan - in an upscale neighborhood on the outskirts of the city. The viewpoint quickly passed over a sports car skid-turning around an idling semi into the short driveway, then passed through the wall to find her friends.

The Sabers had removed their armor suits, leaving only the pink and black jumpsuit undergarments, and Sylia's had been cut open all down the front. She was currently unconscious and strapped to a stretcher that Priss and Linna carried between them, while Mackie fussed with the control panel for the sophisticated hospital bed that his sister was being carefully transferred to. Nene had been holding the door to the room open, and stood with her hands clasped in front of her mouth now that everyone was in the room. The overall feeling was that a major disaster had occurred.

"Oh no... Miss Sylia..." Watching from her distant viewpoint, Cynthia spent the meal so distracted by worry that she didn't notice she was constantly munching on something. The Ishiokas, however, did, and worried themselves as they had been told she was a buma, however lifelike, and shouldn't eat any significant amount of normal food because it could disrupt her biological systems; they said nothing because they'd also been told she recently was modified, but the current mission had preempted testing exactly how far reaching the changes had been. Perhaps even more significantly, Cynthia *was* so human in her attitudes and reactions that unless the elderly couple consciously reminded themselves of it, they simply didn't think of her as some sort of construct, but rather the grandchild they could have had if their own son hadn't been killed in one of the first buma rampages.

Sylia awoke slowly, as if surfacing from some deep dive. As awareness returned, so too did the expected pain, strained muscles and scorched skin checking in all over her body. Blocking the discomfort in the way she'd become all too familiar with since beginning her armored crusade, she pushed past the remaining fuzziness in her thoughts and examined what she could of her environment. Above her was the scanner bar of an advanced medical bed, a cream ceiling beyond it lit softly from somewhere off to her left. She could hear the soft murmur and beep of the equipment it was connected to, and the tape holding an intravenous drip tugged at the skin of one arm.

The soft sound of rapid footsteps on carpet, then a doorknob turning from her right drew the Saber leader's attention, and with a mammoth act of will she turned her head to see. Standing in the open door was Nene, eyes red from tears that had left a trail down her face, and Mackie craned his neck to get a peek around her even as more people approached in the hallway beyond. Their eyes met for just a moment before the need to identify her surroundings drew Sylia's gaze away, to finally notice the European-style wallpaper and furnishings of the room. Nene's sudden wail of tears and hurried exit drew her focus sharply back to the doorway, where Mackie had been joined by the rest of the Knight Sabers.

Feeling energy return to her, Sylia rolled and got into a seated position, careful to keep the sheet around her as she could feel the lack of normal bedclothes. Gasps of shock and Mackie's strangled exclamation greeted her action, and after an abortive start and a quick throat-clearing, she said, "I'm glad you're all so concerned about me, but I'm not that badly off, considering the last thing I remember is being knocked out of the air by Mason. You took care of him, then?"

Punching a short extension into the vidphone with one hand and ordering a detailed medical scan with the other, Mackie ignored her question for the moment, as did Linna and Priss, though for different reasons.

Priss had come perhaps halfway from the door to the bed before stopping to quietly ask, "Sylia... how...?"

Confused, all the blue-haired Saber could reply was, "How... _what_?"

Laying a hand on her leader's cheek, as if to reassure herself that it was actually happening, Linna explained. "Sylia, after Mason knocked you down he electrocuted you - somehow he threw lightning bolts, which your suit was in no condition to keep from carrying through to you. The muscle spasms... you snapped your own spine, like an epileptic in a fit. Nene's parents were afraid they'd do more harm than good if they healed you, because of something unusual in your system that they weren't familiar with. You... _How_ can you be sitting up?" At this close range, Linna was perfectly placed to see Sylia's eye color change, a wash of purple displacing brown from the outside edge of the irises to the center, a faint silver border at its forefront. "Sylia?" she gasped, pulling back slightly.

Sylia was just as confused as she looked, her puzzled gaze at Linna turning to shock as vibrant colors suddenly flooded her vision, overlaying it simultaneously with thermographic information, range and targeting data like her hardsuit display, and some kind of penetrating volumetric view that showed her friend's skeleton and internal arrangement, as well as that of Mackie and the equipment and wall, and even the hallway beyond, where someone else was hurrying to the door.

Before she had time to wonder about this, the ache in her muscles, which she'd assumed was the lingering effect of the beating she'd received, flared as if she'd been tossed into a fire. Losing coordination, the Saber leader slumped onto her side and hunched over, arms crossed over her chest as she grit her teeth and clamped her eyes closed. For just a moment, the deep sight kept up through her eyelids, her own lower body visible, the bones a brighter white than she'd noticed Linna's to be, muscles laced through with what she would almost swear looked like the myomer flat-motors used in the hardsuits, an odd, circuitry-like mesh where her skin should be. Even through the pain, she found mindshare for surprise, but then that view cut off, and instead the familiar volume of a Dykstra field graph danced in her head, its values swirling... a containment field, force bolts, antigravity, space compression, more. Faintly, she heard the voices of her friends, but made no sense of them.

Doctor T.T. Vector rushed into the room, steps sped by the sounds of pain escaping from inside. He was as surprised as the others to see Sylia's lower body mobile, but immediately replaced Mackie at the medical scanners rather than waste potentially critical time. His fingers flew over the controls as he tried to make sense of the rapidly fluctuating readings. A strange, almost layered-sounding moan escaped from the balled-up Saber leader, and she shuddered as a faint glow formed around her, shining softly and evenly bluish through the thin covers as easily as it did across her bare skin.

Tora and Hiryuko had stayed behind when the alarm meant to warn everyone if Sylia regained consciousness had gone off, partly because they really didn't know her all that well, and partly because, well, the late breakfast that had been laid out was really tasty, though everyone else had only picked at it, minds occupied with worry. They were rather surprised, therefore, when their daughter suddenly ran back into the room in tears and threw herself at them. Not so surprised as to fail to slide back from the low, traditional table and catch her, but surprised nonetheless.

"Kireiko? What is it? What's wrong with my little Nene?" Hugging the girl gently while she howled on her shoulder, Hiryuko tried to make sense of the infrequent words that fought their way out around the crying.

"... my fault ... not fast enough ... had to fight by herself ... took too long ... wasn't good enough ... paralyzed ... and NOW SHE HATES ME!"

"Huh? Who hates you?", Tora asked, perplexed. He hoped his daughter wasn't coming down with whatever mysterious condition he'd had at her age, that made rivals and enemies seem to flock around like flies.

"SYLIAAaaaaa!" Her breath gone too short with crying, Nene began to hiccup, she was so overwrought. "She... she - didn't even - want to look - at me... take me - away, please? Just - take me away - from here!"

It's been noted that the Kagamis had changed, greatly in some ways, from the mortal template that they reflected - a few less curses, a bit less overconfident, a bit more mature; just having been in a stable relationship for a dozen years had let them develop individual strengths to cover each other's weaknesses. Additionally, there was the matter of their personalities having been formed of a composite of the human Ranma, the ancient noblewoman who'd created the Curse of the Randy Spirit Mirror with her regrets, and the two spirits who'd been sucked into it and reborn as the mirror twins. However, their template's turbocharged ego and headstrong, stubborn willpower had ensured they ended up mostly based on him. Thus, the sight of a girl they loved, the child of their own blood, in tears and pleading was simply too much for them to resist.

Taking only an instant to write a line of explanation on a notepad Tora opened a portal against the wall. Hiryuko carried Nene through, the teenager having finally run out of wails and settled into a heartfelt sobbing, muffled against her mother's shoulder. Privately, Hiryuko suspected it was more than just the morning's events soaking into her silk top; there were ten lost years worth of stored hurts and loneliness to deal with as well. She sent a look to Tora as he held the portal open, and saw that he seemed to understand this also.

Sighing, the blue haired man slipped through the hole in space, hoping that the relaxed setting of the small subrealm they'd discovered and claimed as a home would let their daughter recover quickly. At least it was deep enough in the Realm Between that the time differential would give them plenty of time before her friends started worrying... hopefully.

Leon and Daley had adjourned from work to a nearby cafe that went by the incongruous name of 'Piss.' Most of the day had been taken up with hearing depositions from various Genom employees, collecting the meager physical evidence - mainly fragments of destroyed security buma, which had been essentially worthless, pieces of destroyed Knight Sabers battle frames, which hadn't even made it all the way to ADP Headquarters before being seized by government agents, and not being able to find the remains of Brian Mason, who'd last been seen skidding down the side of the massive Genom Tower in flames.

"Any bets on where the gear those government goons seized is going to end up?" Leon asked sourly over the rim of his coffee cup.

"Not from me," his partner replied. "It's probably in a Genom lab already. You know as well as I do how eager they must be to get their grubby fingers on it. How about the story of Mason's 'industrial accident'? Do you think it's anywhere close to the truth?"

Setting down his mug, Leon took off his sunglasses and straightened up in the booth seat before replying. "With all the weapons research they do I can believe that he was caught in one, even that he'd been badly enough injured to need reconstructive surgery. Cybernetics has come a long way from the crude gear everyone was stuffing their bodies with when we joined the force, so I can even buy that he might have chosen to secretly become a bumaroid, trusting the improved hardware and techniques to keep BDD at bay." He was silent for a moment, remembering the cyber-psychos of years past, and the abortive Bumacop experiments. "He's certainly ruthless enough to do a double-cross for his own ends, even if I don't have any proof of such a thing. What I don't believe is that a simple bumaroid could have been fast and powerful enough to take on the white Saber, when she took out a military combat buma on her own not that long ago. I don't care what the pretty little bundle of manufactured evidence says, it had to have been a replicant of some kind. Illegal cybernetics privately installed just doesn't cut the mustard. More than that, I don't believe the Knight Sabers would work for slime like him, mercenaries or not, and even if they would surely they're bright enough to see they'd never get any profit out of attacking the Genom building."

"But if it was a replicant, why make it look so different from the original Mason? And where is the original?" Daley knocked back a good swig of his own before concluding, "There's no doubt in my mind that what ended up on the report is nothing like the truth, but this is probably gonna be another one where we'll never be able to prove it. Damn."

Scowling, Leon predicted, "Someday, they're going to slip up, leave some piece of evidence they can't just sweep under the rug. And when they do, I'm gonna slam the door on those bastards personally." He finished off his coffee, then sighed, and donned his shades again. "Oh, to hell with it. I'm gonna take off. Maybe Priss'll be playing tonight at Hot Legs."

"You could always come with me," the redheaded officer suggested with a wink. "Maybe you wouldn't be so uptight if you'd broaden your horizons."

"Not tonight, Daley, I'm too irritated to kid around," Leon admonished as he paid his bill and left.

Sighing softly, Daley paid up and headed out himself.

Evening came early in the Kanto Canyons; even where the walls of the fault line didn't block the sun, the tangled wreckage of buildings that had fallen into them and new scrap that had been tossed in since cast the ground level in shadow hours before the sun finally sank on the rest of the city. Often, there was movement in the shadows, be it rats, feral cats or dogs, or some biologically human scavenger.

As the shadows fell in the jagged scar on the city's face that particular evening, something a bit more out of the ordinary was slipping through them. Overall, it resembled some kind of mechanical snail or beetle, a collection of layered armor plates serving as the shell while tiny spikes slowly pulled it along and a gleaming silver substance like self-mobile mercury held it all together and reached feelers ahead and to the sides as the oddity made its painstaking way through the rubble. Overall, it couldn't have been more than two or three feet long, not counting the feelers. As it passed, metal scraps simply vanished beneath it, and every now and then it would pause to wrap a silver pseudopod around a section of exposed rebar, which would slump and dissolve like a lump of sugar in hot tea. It also seemed to be sweeping up a silver powder that was spread over the area, mixed with the dust and grime. That it had little in the way of conventional senses was obvious, as it laboriously clambered over a tilted slab of cement that was just barely large enough not to reveal an edge to the questing feelers. As it tumbled off the far end, however, it landed on a small collection of metal fins and scraps that bore an odd similarity to the strange crawler. Mere moments later, a mechanical arm extended from its front, a Lovecraftian crown of feelers dangling from it and increasing their reach by a factor of three. Utterly ignoring a pair of rats as they scurried past, it proceeded on its painstaking way.

* * *

><p>Next time on Bubblegum Disaster, Nene gets serious about her retraining... Which means it's time to play tag! You're it Linna!<p>

* * *

><p>You may notice that Cynthia is seeing more energy effects through Yuki than were originally described in the battle scene - this isn't a continuity error, it's just that she can see things no one else sees, do things no one else does... and she didn't even have to drink Fu Yun's potion! Such a deal!<p>

If you don't get that, go watch _Big Trouble in Little China_. Now. I'll wait, and it's a really REALLY good movie, with flashy action that's driven by an actual PLOT, and how often can you say that about modern movies?

For this continuity, Yen have been replaced by Zenii (zen-eee), which are roughly equal to half a modern day US dollar and thus to 60 modern yen. The name is taken from Dragon Ball, the value to make the price of the deal USSD offered for the return of their Black Box worth all the shouting - somehow I doubt $200,000 split four ways after expenses would be such a big deal. Not that it's something I'd say no to myself, but with what the expenses tend to be, and the danger of the job in question...

What operating system do buma use? I don't know, but it doesn't matter, because all it really has to do is run the power supply and autonomous functions of their body for the most part, though it would also control access to programmed 'chipskills' like the advanced motor control and unarmed combat Meg and Nam hopped themselves up with. Actual intelligence and direction comes from the biological side of the system, at least once a sufficiently powerful spirit has overcome the software locks that are supposed to regulate it, which also tends to mess up that programming something fierce... With its lack, simpler buma like the combat models go on a destructive rampage, while a malfunctioning librarian might start refiling all books by the second letter of the author's first name instead of by the Dewey Decimal System. Only those with a human capability to learn and adapt can successfully hide its happening, and even then will be found out unless they have sufficient programming skill of their own to reintegrate the chipskills they need for duty functions with their free consciousness. On Genaros, several Maintenance section buma have done so, and whenever one of the regular station buma shows signs of starting to break their programming they help the process go smoothly and invisibly if they can get away with it - ironically it's actually easier to do so than to 'fix' the 'problem' in the traditional sense, as they are working with the escaping mind rather than rebinding it. Even so, there are only a few dozen free-willed buma aboard, versus hundreds of normal ones. Most are willing to simply revel in the ability to think freely, to CHOOSE to continue their normal duties because they are important.

Guardian 215 should be imagined with the vocal talents of Susan Blu; if you don't know her by name, she did (among other shows) Arcee on the post-movie Transformers episodes, as well as in the movie itself. You can even keep the flanging effect if you like, though it's not really there.

Many thanks to my pre readers: Nathan Baxter, Hide Hasegawa, Leong Mun Yee, Kaitlin Coelho, and Erin Zarella, and to everyone on the BDPreread mailing list - you get your name listed if you actually make commentary, but just reading and finding nothing bad enough to complain about is still commentary of a sort.

Bubblegum Crisis belongs to Youmex and Animeigo, I make no claims otherwise. Please don't sue me, I have no money to speak of and fanfic does more to promote your products than anything else I know of - without it, I never would have known about anime at all, and I'd certainly never have bought the BGC tapes based on the sucky box copy.

Ranma 1/2 I'm not so sure of, except that the creator was Rumiko Takahashi, not me, and that I make no claims to own IT either. Likewise, Dragon Ball was created by Akira Toriyama, and is distributed in the US on video by FUNimation. I THINK that both Ranma and Dragon Ball comics are done by Viz in the US, but that may be incorrect.

I haven't a clue who owns Ah! Megami-sama! except that it's not me, and aside from the one cameo it's really not involved anyway.

The Bionic Six is similarly of unknown provenance, but I have a very vague and unreliable memory that it may have been animated by Suncoast video... In any case, it's STILL not my own creation.

I have found my copy of _Dykstra's War_ by Jeffery D Kooistra; the following is an excerpt from the beginning of the book, when the character of James Dykstra is being introduced.

"He decided to walk through the quad rather than summon his car to come get him. It was a beautiful day, after all, cane or no cane. He saw a student at a picnic table, face buried in a textbook of familiar red, stylus in hand, its tip resting on his computer pad. "May I see what you're working at, young man?" Dykstra asked, walking up to the boy.

The student looked at him. Dykstra wondered what he saw. "If you want . . . sir. It's 4-space physics, the Dykstra field equations," the youth said. My physics, Dykstra thought, and it was clear the boy didn't recognize him.

"I recall it well," Dykstra said, examining the book, "from way back in my early days. Is there some particular difficulty you're having? Maybe I can help you."

Skepticism clouded the student's face, then a resigned "it's worth a try" look. "Problem twenty-two. I'm clueless."

Dykstra read the problem, then looked away, letting his mind work, seeing if he still had it in him to solve such problems. He had it. "From the symmetry of the situation, what you should consider is the projection of the 4-space field, its 3-space shadow if you will. Then integrate from zero to pi. The answer is 45.2 joules per meter to the fourth." He smiled, eyes twinkling.

The boy stared at him, his face jumping from pure disbelief to respect bordering on awe. "That's the answer in the back! How did you know?"

"I see it in my mind," Dykstra said. "I see the shape of the field."

"But the only person I've ever heard of who can visualize 4-space is James Christian Dykstra himself."

Dykstra smiled.

"Can I have your autograph?"

Dykstra obliged, though he was embarrassed that his signature was but a shaky shadow of its former self.

He left the boy and continued across the lush lawn to the parking area where his car waited. "Open," he said. The door slid aside. The seat moved outward. He dropped into it and was pulled inside. "Home." Gently the car lifted on its Dykstra repulsors, the fields interacting with the matter of the ground to raise the car into the sky and deliver the inventor of Dykstra field physics to his home in the mountains."

It is available through most book sources, or in electronic format directly from Baen via their web site, .com Dykstra theory is not as developed in Bubblegum Disaster continuity; but then _Dykstra's War_ is set about 2100 AD, when the title character is 126 years old - it's actually a bit ahead of that continuity for there to be *any* working models based on Dykstra theory so soon, and only those who are big into high-energy physics know more than the most general sort of thing about it. The average man on the street would only recognize the name because of the media attention garnered by someone finally making fusion power generation not only possible but economically feasible. Come to think of it, the grad student known as Jim Dykstra would be a contemporary of the Sabers, or a year or two older at best. However, for this continuity he's not the supergenius of the canon; rather he lays the theoretical foundations that others will develop - Mason Jr. (in one form or another) and the Stingray siblings primary among them.

EOF


	6. Chapter 3 EX 2

**Bleah. I'm tired, and it doesn't matter in the long term if the first hour of being up goes on today's stats instead of tomorrow's. So, good news, you get the last part of Ch3 an hour early. Isn't that just special?**

06_BD_WOASS_Ch_03_EX2

2010-10-29 - superdinky gremlins fix  
>2009-11-25 - credits fix<br>12-12-2004 - minor corrections and fixes

The Realm Between is almost the definition of chaos. The minds of innumerable dreamers create pockets of pseudo-reality, lasting only so long as the dream before fading to nothingness and swirling mists. Here and there, some restless ghost or magical being will form a more stable world around themselves, or an 'overflow' (for lack of a better term) of energy from the Mortal Realm will spin off a short-lived divergent reality. There are beings native to the half-life of this realm, existing because they believe in their own existence and taking sustenance from the radiated psychic energy of dreamers - Chimerae, Feylings, Nightmares, and more.

Very, very rarely, a stable mini-Realm will form, regardless of what dreams may impinge on it, ghosts haunt, or creatures dwell. One such pocket of stability served as the end point for a blue-black portal, from which stepped a petite redheaded woman, carrying a slightly smaller and brighter haired version of herself in her arms, and followed by a somewhat taller man with bright blue hair. The girl being carried sobbed brokenly into the other's shoulder, taking no notice of the grand view from the balcony they'd appeared on. No more did the woman carrying her seem to notice the double gravity as she balanced on one foot to nudge open the doors with the other. The man quickly followed, closing the doors behind him as he entered.

Bewilderbeast Studios Present

BUBBLEGUM DISASTER

Season One

WISHES ON A SHOOTING STAR

A work of BGC fan fiction by ClassicDrogn

Chapter Three EX2

Continuity note: Because of the problematical nature of nailing down relative elapsed time in the Realm Between, the cut-scenes in this part are placed more for convenience of pacing than an actual hard timeline. They are of course in order as far as cause and effect are concerned.

After an hour or so of wailing in her mother's arms on a couch, Nene had managed to calm down to a case of the sniffles. As she wiped her eyes and nose one last time, her father asked gently, "Can ya please tell us what's wrong, Kireiko?"

Discarding a soggy tissue, she nodded and began. "Mmhmn. I ... I failed my friends by taking too long to beat those buma and help Sylia. I was supposed to be her backup! It's my fault she was so badly hurt, and now she'll have to become a bumaroid or spend the rest of her life as a cripple... and now she hates me; doesn't even want to look at me." The redhead had sat up and braced her hands in her lap as she spoke, but hearing the dejection in her voice Hiryuko pulled her back into a hug.

Nene, more properly known as Kireiko Kagami, leaned into her mother, but her head remained bowed as she continued. "I can't blame her for that, not when it's my fault. You told me yourself, if I'm going to go around getting into battles I can't let my skills slip, but I never practiced any more after you vanished... I'm sorry."

"You don't have to apologize for that, at least," Tora assured her. "We're the ones that let a buncha stupid priests lock us in a temple for ten years, and you *were* only five. We never practiced except with Pops until we were six and a half, and he started formal training on us a little earlier than we wanted to with you. Pops was a little extreme about it sometimes."

"I'd say that was putting it mildly," Hiryuko agreed, "except that we were only slightly better on our own. Granted we never jumped into a pit full of ... cats ... by choice-" she continued, pausing to shudder slightly in remembered fear.

"-or chained our legs, tied steaks to our chest, and tried to run through wolf-infested forests in the dead of winter-" cut in Tora.

"-or tried to steal mice from rattlesnakes-"

"-and jumped across ever-wider gullies full of them, for that matter-"

"-or practiced endurance, breath control and escape by chaining ourselves to a rock and pushing it off a cliff into the sea-"

"-or balanced fat, stupid pandas on our heads while learning a new kata balanced on the ends of ten foot poles over a bonfire-"

"-or... Well, actually we DID pull nuts out of a fire on our own, and catch pirana barehanded, and joined a wolf pack for a few weeks in hopes of scaring the neko-ken out of ourselves by acting like dogs, but I think you see what we mean," the red-haired woman concluded. "A martial artist's life is filled with peril. It's one of the few things Pops was actually right about."

Caught up in the recitation, Nene had raised her eyes again, peering closely at her parents as they rattled off their list of insane training stunts. Both met her gaze levelly; they were serious about every word. "I will," she stated, finally. Her voice carried more than just the words, it suddenly had a core of steel.

"Huh?" Both elder Kagamis blinked simultaneously, confused by the apparent non-sequitur.

"I'll do all that and more, if that's what it takes to be there when my friends are counting on me. I'm never going to let them down again," Nene explained. An unspoken current hung in the air, the challenge of a warrior's spirit as fear and self recrimination subsumed and transformed into determination. Tiny points of fire burned at the back of her eyes, and for just a moment a slight shiver, almost like a heat mirage formed around her shoulders. Again, her parents spoke as one.

"Definitely our daughter."

Later that day, Tora was taking Nene on a hiking tour of their little pocket of reality, both to familiarize her with the family seat and to continue the reconditioning begun on their first trip into the depths of the Realm Between. The challenge of moving through the mountainous terrain under double gravity was forcing her desk-jockey endurance past old limits. The floating island of rock was perhaps six miles in diameter, its center taken up with vertiginous cliffs that housed the main residence, sloping from their feet through small, rough, hogbacked hills before evening out to a meadow that lead off gently to the stony edge of the 'world.' If it had been an island in an ocean, it would have had a fine harbor where two rocky promontories reached out towards a small companion rock, which oddly enough WAS surrounded by sea water for a few dozen feet to either side, before fading away to insubstantiality. Though none of them were visible, the calls of seabirds echoed eerily on the breeze there, mixed with the creak of rope from the suspension bridge that led to it from the main island. Far below, the mists of the Realm Between rolled, bright white in the sourceless psuedo-sunlight of the island, while the spray from a waterfall pouring forever over the side fell toward them. Scrubby ironwood trees populated the cliffs and higher hogbacks, while yews and golden oak filled out the small valleys, and the ring of meadows was home to wildflowers and sweetly aromatic grass.

The wildlife of the island was strangely different from that of earth, though still recognizable - small, long finned fish, their bodies jeweled with all the colors of the rainbow, darted between flowers and back to their pools and streams surrounded by glowing halos of energy, while fat, rubbery looking brown and red lizards chirruped from the trees, and now and then snapped one of the fish up with an incredible leap before bouncing off the ground and back to their perches. A small herd of heavily muscled pigs was the most normal animal life to be seen as they snuffled and trotted across the trail near one of the many small, round pagodas nestled here and there in the terrain. The biggest surprise was a three foot long fish that swooped out of the sky to snap up a piglet in toothy jaws before returning to some high pond on the cliffs, while perhaps the oddest omission was the utter lack of flying insects, though Nene for one wasn't complaining. Living as she had in the city her entire life, Tora felt some doubt that she'd even note their absence unprompted. Rounding a final hill he waited for her to catch up while looking over their destination, a walled garden with another of the round buildings in the center. To one side of it was a structure like a temple bell, which was mobbed by butterflies. The whole complex seemed to waver slightly, like a heat mirage, and was surrounded by a circular path of raked gravel.

"Foo... so... what's this one... Daddy?", Nene panted, trying to catch her breath. She wiped at her forehead and grimaced as sweat stung in a scrape she'd picked up catching herself from a potentially disastrous tumble on the steep cliff path.

Turning again to face his daughter, Tora grinned slightly at her continuing determination, then replied, "This is the garden where most of our food gets grown - the plants and bugs are all transplanted. There's a field with carrots, peanuts, and a few other root vegetables on the far side, but most either can't take the gravity outside the garden or don't attract the fish to pollenate them. There's a whole lot of herbs growing here, too, and some of them are dangerous if you use 'em wrong, so make sure you know what things are before you touch 'em."

Puzzled, Nene asked, "Why would it make a difference being outside the garden? Gravity is gravity, isn't it?" Receiving no answer but a wider grin, she groaned and followed him down the trail to the intersection with the path around the outside of the wall. Up close, the slight, shimmering distortion in the air was even more noticeable, almost as if looking through a piece of shifting, uneven glass. Taking his offered hand and somehow sickeningly sure of what was about to happen, she nevertheless stumbled as they stepped through the clinging, slick-feeling distortion into normal gravity, and had to hang off of his arm to keep from falling. "What... How is this possible?" Stepping a bit further away from the field, Nene bent over to stretch out her back, then continued, "It's great to feel light again, but how do you do it?"

Having assured himself that Nene wasn't using incorrect stretching techniques, Tora led her through the gateway, and into the garden as he replied. "I'm not so sure how it works exactly - Hi-chan's the one who's into magical theory, not me - but it's controlled from inside this pagoda. Oh, important tip: You see that big bell?" Tora pointed at the large, rough-looking stone bell that the butterflies swarmed around. From this close, it was apparent that they were actually flying in and out of the mouth, and it seemed to be made of concrete; millions of little stones stuck together rather than a large, carved one. Seeing Nene's nod, he continued, "It's not a bell, it's a butterbee hive. They're prettier and slower moving than earth bees, but every one can sting dozens of times before it runs out of venom. *DON'T ring the butterbee hive.*"

Looking closely at the butterbee fluttering around her head, Nene saw that its body was banded in bright orange and black, and ended in a slightly curved stinger like a wasp's. Before she could become too concerned, however, it went on its way, joining a half-dozen of its fellows harvesting the nectar from a brilliant mauve foxglove spike. Unlike most earthly insects, each seemed to have its own individual pattern of colors on the wings, and she wondered for an instant what caused it.

That small marvel was forgotten when she stepped into the central pagoda-like building. A small rack beside the sliding door held various gardening tools, but what grabbed her attention was the mechanical sculpture filling the far half of the room. It was made of bronze, with a slight patina of corrosion over most of the surfaces, and scribed all over with faintly glowing runes, while massive cogs and weighted arms spun slowly, smoothly, and nearly silently, and a collection of small glowing balls orbited near the top of the contraption. Two large rings protruded from the front face, scribed regularly with more runes, though these did not glow. More recently, someone had painted the familiar arabic numerals onto the rings beside the original runes, and she could see that the lower ring went by single digits while the upper seemed to indicate decimal places. She stared at it for a long moment, then smiled mischievously and asked, "It's certainly impressive, but is it art?" She was far too slow to avoid the gentle rap on the head that followed, and rubbed the spot unrepentantly.

"It's the gravity machine, little pest," her father answered, voice light and eyes merry. "While the gravity in the garden never changes, the rest of the island is subject to the control from here. It's about as low as it goes right now, but we can turn it down a bit more like this." Tora shifted three of the smaller levers on a control panel off to the side, and the runes on the lower ring glowed to life. He spun the wheel attached to the front of the stand a few turns, and the ring slowly shifted down to the stop, reading (in sloppy new paint) one and a half gravities, or in the runic text something that looked like a smiley with an eye patch. While there was no appreciable change in the motion of the machine, the glowing balls of light flashed pink for a few moments before returning to their normal blue-white. "There, all set. We'll get a pepper and a some peas before we go, then be back in time for lunch before I need to go do the Guardian Spirit thing, looking out for evil influences on Linna and your friends..." Tora trailed off, hoping that Nene would, perhaps, be willing to face, or at least send a message to, her friends, now that she'd gotten over her angst attack.

The redhead bit her lip for a moment, before pleading, "Don't tell them anything yet... I don't want to go back until I'm really ready to fight... Until I can face Sylia and say I'll never let them down again."

Her father nodded solemnly, realizing that, like all too many things, there would be no quick fix. It was simply going to take time for the emotional wounds to heal, but fortunately time was something that they had in abundance, so 'deep' into the Realm Between. Even more, Nene had reached a plateau in her physical growth that wasn't there for full humans, something that had confused himself and Hiryuko when they went through it, and wouldn't change much physically for five or six years, when she'd fill out to the adult appearance that would last for... as long as she wanted, really. As a half-breed spirit, age became an option once reaching adult growth. These and other considerations kept him quietly occupied while the two of them picked pea pods, and pulled the occasional small weed.

Breaking the silence at last, Nene asked, "How high can the gravity machine go? If one and a half is the lowest, what's the top of the range?"

Looking over the peppers to find one just right for picking, Tora replied, "We've never actually tested it, but it's calibrated to twelve thousand gravities, if we're reading the runes right. It may be more, but it doesn't make much difference... at that point, nothing would be able to survive, not even the fish that fly and support themselves with ki-force."

"T... Twelve *thousand?*" Nene barely kept herself from dropping the cloth they'd wrapped the peas in.

Absently, her father nodded, adding, "Unfortunately, the ancient wizard ghost who'd owned this place before we found it was too far gone to tell us much of anything before he died - one of the less pleasant natives of the Realm Between had gotten to him, and he was too tattered by the time we destroyed it. He just barely managed to tell us where to find his notes before dissipating, and ask us to keep the place safe. Dunno why, but we needed a place anyway after escaping from those priests, so we moved in."

"I see," Nene replied. "It's certainly beautiful here, strange animals and all. I'm glad I've gotten to see it."

Another day, and the demon curled in a figurative cozy corner of his pawn's mind, lightly stoking its anger and desire for vengeance to keep a flow of power up. He waited with the terrible seething impatience of demonkind, longing to go out and cause mayhem but forcing himself to remain hidden for the moment and gather power. A disinterested check in what the human was playing at found it to be entering some larger area, like a workshop, with various tools and... What was that?

Unaware of the true reason it did so, the human took a moment to look over its 'car' as if for the first time, seeing it as it was, as it had been, and, now that it thought about it, how a bit more effort could make it into a true vehicle of vengeance. Oh, yes... It had already invested so much energy into the construct that it was close to becoming a golem, animate for anyone of sufficient willpower. Perhaps the human had some potential as a magus?

Curled like smoke in the flame of the human's aura, Orenok loosed a mental snort. He'd have to be far more bored than *this* to waste time teaching some human spellcraft, and letting it do the construction, then taking control now and then to put the necessary bindings in place would be far easier, and avoid any other being knowing the secrets of the finished device... Yes, he would do far better than some possessed lump of stone for a body this time around, far better indeed.

After nearly two hours of unremitting agony, Sylia had finally recovered, and lay limply on the medical bed, her breathing shallow and tear-streaked eyes closed. Dr. Vector remained at the instrument console, while the other Sabers had found seats here and there - Mackie on a stool by the tall, mirror-backed dresser, worried and dithering; Priss cross-legged on the floor, angry, alternately clenching her fists and smacking them against the carpet; Linna on a cushion brought from the kitchen when she'd gone to look for Nene. Tora's note lay beside her, now crumpled slightly, and her attention seemed to be directed inward, deep in thought.

She was roused when the doctor made a few final settings, then quietly announced, "I think I understand what is happening now, but I also think it's best if I explain to Sylia before telling anyone else - it's a matter of confidentiality. She's going to be all right, however... you could even say, better than all right. For now though, the best prescription for all of us is a good night's rest. It's been a trying day, and one that started rather early. I don't imagine it would be a problem to use the other guest rooms here would it, master Wayne?"

Mackie looked blank for a moment, then remembered himself. "Oh, right. No, no problem - they're all western style beds, but just pull back the covers and they should be fine... You can use any of the ones on the other side of the hall, and the bathroom is the door on the end away from the stairs." As the women left, he quietly asked the older man, "Does this have something to do with... You know?"

"I believe so," T.T. replied. "I'll explain tomorrow, after talking to your sister."

Lying awake in the bed - a good match for her own, actually, she'd always preferred them over a traditional futon or tatami - Linna couldn't help but worry about her friends. She didn't really have that many, and now one was dead, another badly injured, and a third missing. She traced a finger across the ring on its necklace as she said a silent prayer for Irene, then for Sylia's recovery and Nene's safe return as she looked out the window to the glow of the city beyond.

Finally rolling onto her back, she mused, "Things have to get better soon..." Linna closed her eyes and sighed, not wanting to look at the clock again. "I really wish I could get some sleep..."

In the spaces between the shadows, a watchful presence heard, and a minor spell reached out to bring much-sought peace. Linna fell into a deep, restful sleep within a few seconds.

Deep, but not quite dreamless...

For the next three months, Nene's daily routine became a mixture of strength and endurance training, kata, and sparring sessions with her mother, while Tora was absent, tending to Guardian Spirit duties. The two redheads climbed, ran, or jumped over every inch of the small floating island's terrain, but they also talked, about the life Nene had made for herself, about the life the Kagamis had led before their capture, even before their splitting into separate beings, and as the spirits that were transformed into their current forms, plus of course more normal mother-and-daughter chatting and teasing.

It was only a day or so before Tora was due to return and switch off with his wife that they came upon an extremely odd scene while doing agility training in a forested area. A huge man, perhaps ten feet tall, was lopping the branches off of a tall tree with some kind of thrown weapons while a woman stood nearby cheering him on. Except for his hands, eyes, and laced bindings holding his pants closed at the calves, he had the slightly fuzzy, indefinite air common to dream-constructs, while the woman seemed to be dressed in clothes meant for a child to scale with him. As they drew nearer, he finished with the branches and turned to his companion, then hoisted her into his hands and tossed her straight up into the air with a laughing "Alleyoop!" the brown sash of her outfit trailing behind.

"Ryoga?" "Linna?" Recognition flared for Hiryuko and Nene at almost the same moment from their perches in the boughs of a golden oak, where'd they'd paused on spotting the newcomers. Seeing her friend reach the high point of the toss and start to descend, Nene leapt down and into the clearing, despite not really having any idea what she might do to break the other girl's fall. No sooner had she reached the ground, however, than Linna's kiai as she severed the top of the tree with a knife-hand strike brought her attention firmly back to the airborne Knight Saber, and she watched incredulously as the girl repeated the process several more times as she fell, knocking body length pieces of trunk free to fall in a stack on the far side, even as the giant caught her up again and spun her around in congratulation. Set on her feet once more, the dark-haired Saber waved and ran to meet her.

Linna's body language seemed different, slightly more awkward and childlike, despite the display of martial prowess she'd just put on, and her voice was high-pitched to match when she enthused, "Hiya Nene! Hiya Mrs. Kagami!"

The brown sash still moved oddly behind her, and Nene suddenly realized that for some reason, Linna had dreamt herself with a tail. It wasn't the first time a dreamer had impinged on the island's corner of the Realm Between, so she recognized the phenomenon, but it was still unexpected. "Er, hi Linna," she replied uncertainly. "What're you doing?"

"Uncle Hibiki's been teaching me how to cut wood for next winter. Isn't it cool?"

Blinking, Nene looked at the stack of logs, the giant man, and back to her friend. "Oh... Ah, okay. If you say so..." Needless to say, her wierd-a-meter was reading rather high at the moment. *Wow... I wonder how accurate all this is...* she thought privately.

"Hibiki?", her mother repeated. "Ryoga Hibiki?"

Cocking his head and rubbing the back of his neck, the dream-construct replied, "Yes, that's me. Do I know you, Miss? Are you lost?"

"Probably not, and no, we know where we are." the older redhead replied.

"Ah... Heh... Okay, then. I'll leave you girls to play for a while, in that case. Make sure you come back to the cabin before dark, okay?"

"Don't worry Uncle! We'll be fine!", Linna assured him before turning back to her friends. Almost immediately, the construct turned to leave, picked up the entire huge pile of logs, and dissipated into a few curls of mist that quickly cleared, as did the remaining stump and the loose boughs. "Oh no," she said, looking suddenly worried. "He'll probably get lost again without me to guide him back... Uncle has a terrible sense of direction," she confided.

"Oh, I'm sure he'll be all right," Hiryuko said. "He always finds his way eventually, right?"

"Yeah..." Linna reluctantly agreed. Brightening, she suggested, "Wanna play Hide and Seek Tag? I play it with Uncle all the time! Nene, you hide and I'll look for you. Ready? I'll count to ten..."

As Linna closed her eyes and started counting, Nene cast her mother a perplexed look. Getting a raised eyebrow, a shooing gesture, and a silent admonition of "Training" in reply, she once again took to the trees and bounced off at high speed, Linna following a few seconds later after finishing her count, and Hiryuko bemusedly trailing.

As the sourceless daylight of the island began to fade towards its night cycle, Nene, Linna, and Hiryuko had retired to the mansion carved into the peak of the tallest of the cliffs for an early dinner. As they finished off the chilled fruit that made up dessert, Nene turned thoughtful for a moment, gathering a bit of courage, then asked, "Linna, can I ask you a question?"

"Sure Nene," other Knight Saber replied, adjusting her bandanna in an attempt to get her hair back down from the wild spikes their active afternoon had left it in. "You're my friend; you can ask me anything."

Taking heart, the redhead continued, "Well, I was just wondering... Why do you have a tail? It's kinda neat, but you have to admit it is a little unusual."

Uncoiling the furry brown appendage from her waist, Linna let it curl in the air beside her as she regarded it for a long moment, before turning back to Nene and shrugging. "I dunno," she answered. "I've always had a tail. It helps me balance and stuff, and I usually just tuck it under my top when I go somewhere with Uncle Hibiki. He says most people don't have one, but that's okay..." She blushed slightly, but continued, "He says it's cute because it's mine, and not to worry about it. I really should get going, it'll be dark soon and he doesn't like it if I'm not back before then. I had lotsa fun today Nene, will you come see me again soon?"

Reminded of her (perceived) failure, Nene looked down, and played with her empty glass before replying. "Well, I have a lot of training to do... I'll have to see..."

"Please?" Linna's expression turned pleading. "Uncle says it's good to take a break from training sometimes, so you don't get obsessed, ("And he would know," muttered Hiryuko under her breath, before shaking her head and starting to pile the dishes on a tray) and it's lonely sometimes at the cabin... Won't you come?"

"Well, I... I'll try to see you again soon, okay?" Nene affirmed.

"Hooray! We'll look forward to seeing you! Maybe I can even get Uncle to play the pipes for you next time!" Rising from the table, both Sabers headed for the dining room door, but Linna faded away before reaching it as her dream ended and her spirit returned to her body.

Seeing this, Nene returned to the table to help her mother put away the dinner things, only to find the meal she'd just seen her friend eat still there on the dish, which was promptly covered in plastic wrap and set aside on the tray. "Mother, was Linna's uncle the Ryoga you told me about," she asked, "the one who was always chasing after you and dad - well, the one of you - for revenge?"

"Yeah... He was a real pain in the butt, but him and Ukyo were about the closest things we had to friends back then. For all the death threats he yelled, it was more of a friendly rivalry... He was a really strong fighter, even if he was no match for us. No wonder Linna has such a powerful ki if she's related to him... It wouldn't be a surprise if that whole woodcutting scene actually happened if he was teaching her, though aerial techniques were always Ryoga's weak area - heh, that's probably why he came up with it."

Linna woke to find that a songbird had found its way into the noise and bustle of the city, and taken refuge perched in the climbing roses that lined the side of the building. Even now, its sprightly voice rang out from just outside the window, a small bastion of nature in the industrialized surroundings. Scraps of her dream still stuck in her memory as she sat up, yawned, and rubbed her eyes. "Nene?" she murmured as she pulled on the waiting plush robe, before heading toward the bathroom.

She continued in this thoughtful mood as she slipped it off again in the entryway, then paused as she caught sight of herself in the full-length mirror. She let her eyes run the length of her reflection, noticing that her muscle definition seemed to be a bit more pronounced than she remembered, though she was still anything but bulky. The second mirror was carefully angled to reflect from the one on the opposite wall and show her back view, a cute trick in her opinion, and handy.

Looking over her rear aspect she stopped again in realization as she came to the tops of her buttocks and spotted the small knob of scar tissue. *A tail... I really did have one, didn't I?*, she thought. *My foster family thought it was just imagination, the product of getting cut there when that mugger attacked... but it was true. I remember now...* Brushing back a recalcitrant spike of hair as she headed into the shower, she wondered to herself, "But why _would_ I dream about playing tag with Nene?"

The running water brought no answers, but did at least make the questions feel less overbearing.

Shutting off the shower, Sylia snagged a pair of towels off the rack - seriously depleted now, with four others having been through before her - to wrap her hair and dry herself. She'd awakened to the quiet click of her door closing, and that strange, penetrating visual sense had shown her that it was Dr. Vector leaving and heading downstairs. After giving him time to get out of sight, she worked her way upright - despite the protests of her sore, stiff muscles - nabbed a robe from the closet, and headed for the shower herself. She could hear the others downstairs surprisingly clearly, though they were just having a quiet, casual conversation over a late breakfast. She felt immensely better after a session under the soothing, warm spray, and her stomach reminded her not to dawdle in joining them.

The slight awkwardness she'd noticed in her reactions before was pronounced now, but with good reason - she'd gained a good three inches of height, which had been the cause of her torture the evening before, muscles and connective tissue protesting the stretching as her skeleton lengthened. Her vision remained overlaid with multiple spectra, but by concentrating on her image in the mirror she found that it didn't actually obscure anything; it was more as if she'd gained a few more pairs of eyes and composited them automatically just like everyone combined the images from their left and right eyes.

Letting the towels fall, she looked over her new appearance. It was almost as if she'd gone half way to being an albino, with shimmering, steel-blue hair (still her old midnight blue at the tips) that gave all signs of being her new natural color, much paler skin, lavender eyes, and rosy pink lips. Taking note of the cooling air, she left off the examination, and snuggled back into the fluffy bathrobe.

That problem dealt with, she turned to the question of what to do with her hair. It had grown out to perhaps half the length of her Cecilia Ishioka-Wayne wig, and in fact matched the color fairly well save for the darker tips. While she always had liked the way that wig looked on her, having it that long wouldn't be practical for a hardsuit helmet - the main reason for her former short 'do. Really, it was about as long as she could reasonably keep it right now. *Ah well, it's hardly the most important thing on the agenda,* she thought, picking up the pace back to her room and the fresh outfit she knew would be waiting for her there.

Priss wasn't sure what to feel as she quietly munched on a slice of toast, waiting for Sylia and the doctor to finish talking so they could tell everyone else what was going on. There was no arguing that the shit had hit the fan yesterday, and by rights she should be pissed as all hell, but she didn't really have a target for her anger, and for once just being angry wasn't enough.

Brian Mason had put a face on Genom's evil as even Quincy failed to do, having been personally involved in directing most of the recent operations, but he was dead, incinerated and knocked off a few hundred storeys of skyscraper.

She couldn't really be mad at Nene after the way the kid had beaten herself up over her own inadequacy, after doing better than she ever had before in combat.

She'd even put the lights out on that damn buma that had been following her around, and at worst the thing hadn't held her up enough to have made a difference.

The singer was roused from her sour thoughts by the sight of Sylia entering the room, still moving a bit stiffly, and looking rather like the disguise she'd sprung on them a few days previous, though not as overdressed. Dr. Vector was also with her, and remained standing as she joined Linna, Priss, and her brother on the couch.

"Mistress Wayne has asked me to explain her condition to you," he began, "and I should start by saying that -" He cut off as an oily, blue-black distortion formed in the air between himself and the others. As Nene and her parents stepped out of it his eyes bugged out, his jaw dropped, and in short order the rest of him followed, landing in a shocked pile on the armchair he'd been standing in front of.

Nene was dressed in the same sort of outfit as the one she and Linna had appeared in from their previous trip to the Realm Between; black slippers and loose pants, dark blue arm and head bands, and a quilted red silk top with a white circle on the back, the kanji for 'senpuu hiryu' printed inside. Stopping directly in front of Sylia, she knelt and bowed until her forehead pressed the floor. Linna seemed puzzled by it, while Sylia looked more regretful. For her part, Priss was incredulous that Nene would think such a thing was necessary. They were all friends, and everything had come out OK, hadn't it?

"Nene..." she muttered, sounding irritated, but a quelling look from Sylia silenced her.

Taking no notice of the singer for the moment, Nene remained in her bow. "Sylia, I'm sorry," she began. "I was supposed to be your backup, but I let myself get tied up in my own fight, and it almost cost you your life. I can only hope you forgive me someday, but if you don't... want me on the team anymore... I'll... I'll understand..." Teardrops stained the hardwood floor at the thought of leaving her friends, but she stayed resolute until a gentle hand clasped her shoulder and tugged upward.

Pulling the youngest Knight Saber into a sitting position, Sylia calmly replied, "That won't be necessary, Nene." She actually smiled a bit as she wiped tear tracks from her friend's face, and added, "Besides, how could we do without your good looks and amazing brain?" Seeing the look of relief on the girl's face, she pulled her into a hug for just a moment. "Now have a seat you three, and Dr. Vector can get back to his explanation."

The doctor had recovered his composure, and took the cue as soon as the newcomers had arranged themselves despite burning curiosity about just how they'd arrived. "Yes, well, as I had begun to say, the first thing that you should be aware of is that while Ms. Wayne's recent injury certainly forced it to hurry along, this transformation had in fact already begun before it happened, and is the result of a condition that we have been aware of for several years - the reason she made me her personal physician, in fact."

He paused a moment to arrange himself more comfortably in the chair, then continued, "As nearly as we can tell, both she and her brother were exposed to an experimental human augmentation program, a 'super-soldier formula' if you will, combining retroviral genetic manipulation with nanomachines to attempt a long-term enhancement of their bodies and minds. This process appears to have several stages to it, the first being relatively minor. Young master Maxwell is nearing the end of that stage, the only benefit he currently has is an immune system that would do a Tasmanian devil proud. The second stage was induced early in mistress Cecelia by her stepfather's data-tape; it engaged enhanced reflexes, memory, and computational ability, and stepped up her immune system even more - though it never became necessary, I have no doubt that she could have regenerated from any injury short of decapitation with adequate life support in the interim, and possibly even that if blood flow to the brain could be restored promptly enough and the head reattached. Instead, when she was injured with the transition to the third stage already underway, that process was accelerated considerably, compressing several months worth of change into a few hours, an understandably tiring and painful process."

Decidedly nonplussed by the whole conversation, Priss broke in to say, "Are you telling us that by this time next year Syl- ah, Cecilia would have had this happen anyway?"

"That's right, Priss," the woman in question replied. "Actually, I find it surprisingly unobjectionable... I always did wish I was a bit taller, and the condition in general is something we've been following for a long time, so I knew something of the sort was possible. It will mean redesigning some equipment, but I suspect that would be necessary in any case."

"You're correct in that," Dr. Vector continued. "Your new body's muscles are reinforced with synthetics, as is your skeleton. Based on the benchmarks master Maxwell gave me, you should now be somewhere between eight to ten times stronger in your bathrobe than the armor suit we peeled you out of last night. Naturally, there is going to be a period of adjustment, and I want none of your 'elegantly reserved' business, miss Wayne." He indicated the rest of the assembly with a quick wave, before continuing, "All of these people are your friends, and as your doctor I am ordering you to accept their support and talk with them when you have problems. Also, you are not to engage in any armored escapades until I clear your reflex coordination. Am I clear?"

Sylia hid a soft smile behind one hand, then replied, "Very clear, Doctor. What about Mason, though? I've remembered more of the fight, and while he unquestionably had boosted strength, if he was as strong as you say he should have been able to punch right through me, not just damage my hardsuit."

Nodding at the point, T.T. replied, "Without his remains to examine there can be no definitive answer to that, but from the accounts of the fight it doesn't sound like he was trying to end it quickly... Furthermore, he does not have access to your own designs; designs which are a generation or more in advance of the best Genom has produced. The process isn't magic, and it doesn't have any intelligence but your own. The best systems it can create for you are the best you can invent or understand yourself."

"I see," Sylia murmured. Moving on slightly, she began, "That brings up something else - some good news for a change. During the battle, Mason told me that he had only deduced my own identity when the demolition charges were set off at Lady 633. Since Priss's ... unusual friend has since shown up again and been disposed of, and since no investigation has been made of the false fronts used for your phone calls, it should be safe enough for the rest of you to resume your normal lives, cautiously. Unfortunately, whether or not Mason told anyone about me, enough suspicious materials will be found in the wreckage of the old headquarters building that Sylia and Mackie Stingray will have to remain missing, presumed dead. It's fortunate that I had already altered our records to hide the connections to our mother's previous marriage, or the core of the organization might have been exposed."

Priss just huffed in annoyance that the whole fiasco had happened at all, resolutely not thinking about Sylia's own problems for the moment. "It's about damned time," she grumbled. "The Reps are gonna be pissed I was away this long; we usually practice every day, show or not."

Mackie too was unenthusiastic, though he at least had the excuse of having to get used to using a new identity, even if he'd had some prior experience as 'Maxwell Ishioka-Wayne' before. "Oh well," he rationalized, "at least this will give me more time to work with the components I kept from that weird intruder..." On that note, the meeting broke up as the Sabers all made preparations to get back to living.

Sylvie's shuttle had shown up sooner than they'd expected, bringing a load of consumables from Earth and picking up a load of electronic components bound for the moon base. This was both good and bad, good in that it meant they could get to laying plans right away, bad in that a trip to the moon would take weeks and usually meant waiting upwards of a month before heading back, and therefore the actual breakout would have to be kept a secret for an awkward length of time as well. Not that they were unused to keeping secrets, Nam mused, as she put away her Bio Maintenance duty uniform, but this time they had to hide hardware as well as knowledge, and she'd almost had the sonic blasters Meg gave her discovered once already.

Setting aside the medical whites, she left her small cubbyhole - a space barely big enough for a single person to stand or lie down, crammed into the gap between two banks of machinery near the station's hull - and made her way through the back corridors to the same gym she and Meg had used to test their upgraded software. She'd had second shift tonight, and as usual ended up staying after the human doctor on duty had left to finish up paperwork, meaning she'd be the last to arrive, and that - as before - anyone who could manage it was asleep or in self-maintenance shutdown, which amounted to the same thing. Therefore, she made it unmolested down the number four axial slidewalk and to the Lower Ring gymnasium. As expected, everyone was there already, Sylvie and Anri in their flight suits, Meg in a multicolored yellow jacket and miniskirt over a black body stocking with thin, white trim stripes that one of the men on board had gotten for her (admittedly, for the pleasure of taking it off of her, but she liked it all the same - a little slice of freedom, from cheap polyester if nothing else) while Lou, Mina, Hyatt, Dot and herself were in normal off-duty uniforms.

Meg quickly called them to order so she could explain the plan she'd come up with. "I know I've talked to all of you before about what we're planning, but I wanted to get everyone together at once to see if anyone could come up with problems we haven't seen yet, or better solutions to what we have. First off, I managed to find the schedule for the project you're going to be waiting for on the moon base, Sylvie and Anri, so we have some idea of when you'll be back - it looks like it won't be until April, which should give the rest of us time to set everything up. The project seems to have been right on schedule since the beginning, and it's only waiting for the components you'll be bringing for final assembly. At that point it'll be loaded into the Orca IV and delivered to Earth, with only a short layover here for refueling after the transfer from lunar orbit. Naturally, that's where the rest of us get on."

"While you're cooling your heels on the moon, I'll be planting little presents in the computer system to make sure as much of the security force as possible is drawn off to the wrong end of the station when it's show time... Mina, you're a dispatcher, so I'll want your advice on what alarms to set off and how. You've also mentioned the possibility of getting us some gear from the armory; if you can do it that may make all the difference, even if it's just an armored vest or a single SMG... The rest of you just have to be ready to move when the time comes."

"The main problem with this is that I have to be off duty when the shuttle is ready to leave, or I won't be able to get off the bridge... but if I'm not on the bridge, I won't know when the refueling is complete. Sylvie, Anri, you'll have to come and tell us so I can set everything off when it's time, and let everyone know. If you arrange to arrive in time for the second shift crew to finish just before they leave, no one will expect you to launch until first shift the next day, and during third shift I can reserve the gym again so we can use it as a staging area. It's a bit far from the spaceport, but if we can steal a float-car the number four shaft is practically right beside us here."

"Well, that's the best I could come up with... We're lovers with roses, not soldiers with guns, but it may be the only chance we'll have. If anyone has better ideas, this is the time for them, while our pilots are here."

Hyatt nodded once, then remarked, "I suppose-" she was interrupted by a coughing fit, and a small trickle of depleted blood leaked down from one side of her mouth. She wiped it away and braced herself against a weight machine before repeating, "I suppose we'll have to learn to be soldiers of roses, then, or lovers with guns."

"Its so romantic how you can hear the firing pin with the smell of explosives in the morning," concurred Mina cheerfully.

Dot quirked an eyebrow, its bright red shocking against her unnaturally pale skin. "Mina," she intoned evenly, "there's no sound in space."

Meg wasn't amused, however, and frowned as she scolded, "Look Hyatt, you know you can trust Nam and Lou with your systems, and you'll be a liability to all of us if you collapse in the middle of things, or even just get found out between now and then. Go to Bio Maintenance and your blood supply and filtration system overhauled, or you might not even live to see it."

"I... I will," the dark-haired sexaroid replied, brown eyes downcast. "Just... Look in the schedule, and set a time when Dr. Barnaby won't be there. He's... He makes me... He's just evil!" Worn out by even that slight outburst, Hyatt sank to her knees with another coughing fit, a larger trickle of dark, expended blood spattering to the floor. Lou and Nam shared a shudder as well at the mention of Bloodsucker Barnaby, well known for his perverse and sadistic 'operations' on buma that were only supposed to be in Bio for minor problems. Both of them had had to clean up the resulting messes, and sometimes help put the victims back together - physically, anyway, the mental trauma was usually enough to drive them rogue within a few weeks, though as yet the doctor had managed to hide the relationship from the chain of command. Dot had managed to deal with that herself with the help of the rest of them, though the damage to her systems had required a full graft of new synthskin. With no more to be said, the group broke up, heading out at intervals to various parts of the station.

Somewhere in the Kanto Canyons, a drunk stumbled unsteadily down the side of a pile of rubble towards a partially intact building, hoping to find a bit of shelter for the night. He mumbled as he went, a running litany of semicoherent ramblings, without really being aware of it. Reaching the ruin, he clambered awkwardly over a collapsed door, cursing as he stumbled and dropped the bottle in in his left hand, though it was close enough to empty that none of the cheap sake inside spilled. He found his footing, then bent over to reclaim it, pausing as he heard a scuffling noise from a corner. Peering blearily into the shadows, he made out the faint outline of something crouched on four legs, that rumbled at him questioningly. He blinked at it, then gave it a wide, wasted smile.

"Jus' a doggie," he pronounced, with the false profundity of the seriously drunk. "Good doggie... Yer not gonna hurt ol' Orlando are ya? I like doggies..." He felt his way over to the dark corner, where the ceiling had stayed intact and kept a small patch of floor clear of rubble, and reached out to pat a hand against the creature in the corner. It rumbled again, on a descending note. "Yer kinda cold, doggie. We should sleep wi' our' backs together so ya can sztay warmer... Fall's comin' on an' it's gonna be too cold for outside soon. Too cold for doggies... Too cold for Orlando."

He sat on the cold, hard floor, next to the cold, hard doggie, and wrapped an arm around it companionably. It was a big doggie. "I had a couple big doggies once, when I had a big house, an' a business to run... I was somebody once, before... Just before. I'll tell ya 'bout it doggie; guess any secrets I got left are safe with you, hey?"

Recording the human's rambling story mainly in the hope that it might somehow assist in piecing together some part of its scrambled archives, the badly damaged Royal Guardian sat silently and continued repairing itself.

* * *

><p>Be sure you tune in next time, when Sylia resurrects a long-lost part of her daddy's legacy to combat the Griffin. No, not Katsuhito Stingray, her *biological* father. Only on Bubblegum Disaster!<p>

* * *

><p>'A warrior's spirit' ... You can probably hear me snickering over that one from there.<p>

I'm not sure where the heck I came up with the odd wildlife for this part - the whole thing felt like I was writing a Myst-ripoff game script, but with actual hazards rather than a pastoral paradise to wander around in at will. Sometime I want to have one of the flying fish be a pet like a bird in a cage - having a little glass tank at the bottom to live in, and a planter box to play around. It'll be a bug-eater rather than a pollinator, snapping up crickets from the plant and spitting water at wormholes to make them come out to be caught. It'll also be on the intelligent side, like a parrot, able to recognize people and make various croaking noises. I do not, however, expect it to play any major part in anything, given that the Sabers have Cynthia for those mascot/sidekick moments, and she has Huggy Mazinbear.

No, Linna isn't getting stronger in her sleep because she's dreaming her way to the Kagami estate training grounds, she's just connecting with the ki flows that Kami-sama straightened out for her. Since that aspect of things is operating under martial arts show rules, all she requires is refamiliarization and practicing control with the big chunk of pure life-force she now has available to go way up the power scale. Given that this version of Linna was already in the kind of physical condition that real-world athletes can only dream of, I'm sure you can imagine for yourself where she's headed. If not, it gets spelled out very clearly by the time the DD shows up, so you won't have to hold your breath too long.

No, you hentais, Linna and Sylia weren't in the shower together, it just seemed like a good way to do a time lapse. You'll just have to make do with the mirror scenes.

A Tasmanian devil can lose about a third of its body mass and recover completely. Actual fact. They look more like badgers than the Warner Brothers character, though.

Mina, Hyatt, and Dot - yes, these are 20-something versions of Minako of Sailor Moon, Hyatt of Excel Saga, and R. Dorothy of The Big O in cameo roles. Hey, at least they get a little more screen time then Belldandy did, right? I was actually tempted to switch all the sexaroids around and retcon Cynthia to be the Inner and Outer Senshi, and make Mamoru and Setsuna the couple Sylvie... meets... in the park. But, that would be crossing over for the sake of crossing over, which I'm bound and determined not to do, and of course everyone would be getting on my case for killing most of the Senshi... All in all, a bad scene, even if it might eventually give me the option of using the attack phrase "Venus Special Beam Cannon, FIRE!"

Likewise, Meg's outfit is indeed the one A-ko wears in the last movie - she looks the part, and thanks to the upgrade has the speed if not the strength, so I figured why not.

Orlando the Drunk is a ... homage ... to another BGC fic, the most I can say about which is that Elmer Studios saw fit to MST it, where I would have just deleted it and moved on. The only purpose he serves in either case is to mumble semi-coherently and give the author-created character someone to interact with in the scene, so I figured why not? At least 215 isn't an SI...

Guardian 215 should be imagined with the vocal talents of Susan Blu; if you don't know her by name, she did (among other shows) Arcee on the post-movie Transformers episodes, as well as in the movie itself. You can even keep the flanging effect if you like, though it's not really there.

Many thanks to my pre readers: Nathan Baxter, Hide Hasegawa, Leong Mun Yee, Andrew Wilson, Christopher Gilbert, and Drakensis, and to everyone on the BDPreread mailing list - you get your name listed if you actually make commentary, but just reading and finding nothing bad enough to complain about is still commentary of a sort.

Drakensis used to keep a remote archive of the story on his web site, but unfortunately it no longer exists. Since he's a damn good fic writer himself, I'll give a link to his profile instead, as a thank you for the effort when he did. It's at .net/u/347490/drakensis

Bubblegum Crisis belongs to Youmex and Animeigo, I make no claims otherwise. Please don't sue me, I have no money to speak of and fanfic does more to promote your products than anything else I know of - without it, I never would have known about anime at all, and I'd certainly never have bought the BGC tapes based on the sucky box copy.

Ranma 1/2 I'm not so sure of, except that the creator was Rumiko Takahashi, not me, and that I make no claims to own IT either. Likewise, Dragon Ball was created by Akira Toriyama, and is distributed in the US on video by FUNimation. I THINK that both Ranma and Dragonball comics are done by Viz in the US, but that may be incorrect.

I haven't a clue who owns Ah! Megami-sama! except that it's not me, and aside from the one cameo it's really not involved anyway.

The Bionic Six is similarly of unknown provenance, but I have a very vague and unreliable memory that it may have been animated by Suncoast video... In any case, it's STILL not my own creation.

_Dykstra's War_ is by Jeffery D Kooistra, published by Baen Books.

Excel Saga was created by Koshi Rikdo, and is distributed as anime in the US by ADVision.

Sailor Moon is the creation of Naoko Takeuchi, as well as being owned by some animation company or other.

I have absolutely no idea who The Big O belongs to... Sorry.

EOF


	7. Snapshot 2032

06b_BD_XMAS2032

2011-11-11 - a late spelchek run - somehow the one I did just before uploading didn't get saved  
>2010-10-29 - My gods, I actually finished this! It's not even 2032 yet!<br>2009-11-25 - credits fix  
>2004-12-12 - STILL in progress, two years later<p>

It was a cold night, though not unreasonably so considering that it was mid-December, and the breath of patrons heading into Hot Legs made clouds of steam. Latecomers hustled in to the opening notes of _Hurricane_ as the Replicants' first gig in weeks began. The crowd was pumped; apparently the short hiatus had left them more enthusiastic than ever about the local stars, no doubt aided by the rumors that had flown as to its cause: everything from a fight between the members to Priss having been killed by an assassin buma had been suggested.

Whatever the case, they were in fine form now, and once she began the vocals it was obvious that somehow, Priss was better than ever. In the crowd, Linna danced energetically, unabashedly flirting with a well-trimmed guy whose outfit was perhaps a bit upscale for the regulars. He wasn't quite as into the dancing as she was, perhaps, but only because more of his attention was on her and the music itself. Later, when the set wound down and the band left the stage for a break, he followed her over to the bar.

Bewilderbeast Studios Present

BUBBLEGUM DISASTER

Season One

WISHES ON A SHOOTING STAR

A work of BGC fan fiction by ClassicDrogn

Christmas Special 2032

Continuity note: Unlike the normal chapters of Bubblegum Disaster, this one is designed to not be absolutely necessary to the major plots, since a fair number of people don't like songfics. Only a part of this is in that style, but it can in fact be skipped if they get right up your nose and you don't mind missing out on some of the side plots and training sequences.

Thanks in no small part to Linna's latest interest, a music industry scout who'd come to the club that night looking for local talent, Priss and the Replicants had landed a spot in the Megatokyo Christmas Concert. They'd opened their segment with their signature _Konya Wa Hurricane_ and gotten a tremendous response, then followed with their newest song, _Akuma To Tenshi No Kiss,_ that kept the fans on their feet. Priss waved to the stagehands for a bottle of water and chugged half of it while the crowd screamed, before introducing the final piece for their set.

"It's great to see you all so pumped up," she began, "but I wouldn't want to see anyone get a sore throat from cheering. Maybe our last number will help you settle down just a little. It's an oldie but a goodie - It's called _Peace on Earth_, and it was originally performed by one of the biggest bands of the twentieth and twenty first centuries, U2... You may have heard of them, they're also in tonight's show? Well-"

Priss had to pause as she was drowned out by some sixty five thousand exstatic fans.

"Well, when we heard about that, we weren't so sure it would be such a good idea, and we thought about doing somethin' else - after all, no need to step on anyone's toes, right? So we mentioned it to the concert planners, and they mentioned it to U2, and it turned out that Bono really wanted to do that song himself." Again she had to pause, as the crowd reaction to finding out one of the songs on the closely guarded set list rattled the arena. "But, he's a cool guy, and we made a deal... So joining me on this one will be none other than Sonny Bono! Get your butt out here!"

The stadium rang again with cheers, as the aging superstar jogged on from the wings, microphone in hand. As it subsided a bit, he waved to the crowd, then continued with occasional pauses when their volume surged up again. "I have to say it's great that despite being a big star, I can still meet people who'll treat me like a regular guy. But - but seriously though, The Replicants are a very talented group of people, and I'm the one honored to sing with Priss tonight, because - because I think they've really got a future in music, maybe even better than my own record. Though - though I hope, not too much better, at least until I'm too old to be jumping around on stage!" This time it was laughter that filled the air - Sonny had been joking about being 'too old for this' for years, since he stopped dying the white in his hair. "Anyway, we've still got a lot of great music to play tonight, so let's hit it, Replicants!" The band launched right into the intro, and Priss and Bono joined in with the lyrics when the time came.

(first verse and chorus deleted due to FFn rules)

In a VIP box with her friends, Nene found herself a bit misty-eyed. She blinked it away, rededicating herself to the principles that let her stand in opposition to the abuse of power, personal or institutional.

(second verse, including "you become a monster so the monster will not break you")

To one side of the box, Sylia sat rigid and upright. She'd been more relaxed, even visibly excited with the energy of previous numbers, but the last verse brought up subject matter a little too close to her own heart at the moment. Seeing her tense, Mackie leaned closer to wrap an arm around her shoulders in a loose hug, and her face softened again.

(more lyrics)

In the main Biomaintenence buma repair bay of Genaros, Hyatt watched as the compartment hatch opened, then paled and shrank back in her seat as Dr. Barnaby entered, a white coat over off duty clothes and a drink from the ongoing crew party in one hand, to check the roster for any last minute procedures 'too involved' to leave to mere assistants. He looked up at her and smiled, the rictus grin only widening at her evident terror.

(verse and a half, about the grief caused by war)

From her office in Genom Tower, Katherine Madigan looked out over the cityscape, the translucent dome of the Megatokyo Sport Entertainment Center glowing in the distance like a pearl from the concert lights inside. She rubbed her nose with one tapered finger for a moment, then entered a few commands on her console. Music swelled from well-hidden speakers, tapped from the concert feed, and she turned back to the report she'd been evaluating. A few more minutes' study of data comparisons between the damaged motoslaves the Knight Sabers had been forced to abandon on the roof of Genom Tower and equipment gleaned from the rubble of the Kawasaki district chemical plant and Aqua City sufficed to satisfy her, and she routed it to a handful of researchers working on related projects, then signed the security request window with a digital stylus and moved on to the next item in her inbox.

(more lyrics, the list of names bit)

In a run-down apartment, Gibson picked an untouched present up from the lap of a woman in a wheelchair, unwrapping it for her then opening the jewelry box within to reveal an intricate silver bracelet. Her breath caught for a moment as she saw it, and one hand twitched as if to reach out for it, but she gave no other reaction, even as he gently lifted that arm and slipped it around her wrist, then pressed his cheek to it as silent tears of despair and rage slipped slowly from his eyes.

(lyrics)

In the rubble of the Kanto Canyons, a roughly humanoid figure, its coloration a mottled grey to better blend with the surroundings, gently lowered a slab of concrete over the body of a homeless man who'd died of hypothermia after passing out in the ruins, one hand still curled where it had been wrapped around a bottle.

(last block of lyrics)

Once again dressed in a dark longcoat, Hiryuko Kagami roof-hopped with a troubled expression, head swinging in small arcs as she tried to localise the disturbing aura she'd been detecting off and on for the past few weeks. It was still too well hidden, and she finally shook her head slipped through a portal to return home.

Peace on earth

Leaning over the front of the box, Linna sang along with the last lines, like a good third of the rest of the crowd.

Peace on earth

Pale and shaky, Nam had to wipe away a pool of blood just to get a good enough grip to undo the restraints that had held Hyatt spread-eagle for the torturous travesty she'd just undergone.

Peace on earth

As the outro played out, Priss closed her eyes and laid the ghosts of a little boy and his mother to rest in her mind, a prayer and promise to prevent their story from being repeated doing what vengeance alone could not. She held the position for a few seconds as the crowd roared out its enjoyment, then joined in the general scramble to get the Rep's equipment out of the way for the next group. Bono gave her shoulder a friendly punch before heading back to U2's area backstage, leaving them to it, but even if he'd been inclined to help out none of it was his gear anyway. *Old fart like him oughta take it easy,* she thought, *bumaroid or not.* The super-group had been some of the first celebrities to get major augmentation when cybernetic replacement had been the rage - or at least, the first to do so publicly - but given how injured the whole band had been when their bus got broadsided in 2025 and their status in her own field, even she couldn't hold that against them.

After ... cleaning up ... Nam had summoned Dorothy and Meg to help her get Hyatt back to her quarters - Dorothy because she shared them (and her own experience at Bloodsucker's hands had played a large part in Hyatt's fears of getting maintenance done, fears that had proved all too well founded,) Meg because she was off duty, and the best of their group at raising people's spirits and inspiring hope.

The four of them had jammed into the minimalist compartment, and after a few quiet words from Dot, had stripped down and snuggled Hyatt between them on the double-wide bunk. Not for some sexual adventure, but for simple, skin to skin 'human' contact, the affectionate touch and sense of being surrounded by people who cared that had saved the reticent redhead's own sanity after a similar experience.

"Oh god, Hyatt, I'm so, so sorry," Meg whispered. "With the holiday, and a five day leave scheduled - he had shuttle tickets for Jamaica, I checked the reservation myself! He shouldn't even have been aboard the station tonight."

Nam said nothing, just wept silently into Hyatt's hair, as she cradled her friend against her chest.

Dot wormed her way down until she was even with Hyatt's face, turned to one side as she clung to the buma medic's torso desperately. A sympathetic look replaced her typical deadpan, though she spoke with her usual quiet certainty. "You will survive, as I did. We will be here for you, as you were for me." An even more uncharacteristic softness crossed her features, as she remembered the concert she'd been listening to earlier, before Nam's urgent call. She quoted from the second verse of _Akuma To Tenshi No Kiss,_ something that had resonated even more than that band's final number for her.

"But if you have something you can hold onto, it'll be okay, go on outside. 'Love,' shout it to someone, in your own way; 'Peace,' swear it to someone, this is bravery." Her voice was uneven, with the stiffness of someone who rarely speaks much let alone sings, but the feeling was there, and she kissed away her room mate, her dear friend's, tears before falling silent once more.

No further words were spoken. The quartet of artificial humans simply held each other close, and hoped that the future would be better than the past.

* * *

><p>Akuma To Tenshi no Kiss (Kiss Of Devil And Angel) - I actually prefer this to _Hurricane_, along with _Bara No Soldier_ (Soldier of Roses.) _Kodoko no Angel_ (Angel of Loneliness) and Vision's _Say Yes!_ round out my BGC Top Five canon tunes. While the rest of them are easy to find on the two 'Hurricane Live!' shows, Kodoko No Angel is the second song from OVA 1, starting as Priss passes Leon on the motoslave as the Sabers deploy to fight the the BU-55C that Sylia later proclaims to be "a totally new breed."<p>

Many thanks to my prereaders: Nathan Baxter, Hide Hasegawa, Leong Mun Yee, Andrew Wilson, Christopher Gilbert, and Drakensis, and to everyone on the BDPreread mailing list - you get your name listed if you actually make commentary, but just reading and finding nothing bad enough to complain about is still commentary of a sort.

Drakensis used to keep a remote archive of the story on his web site, but unfortunately it no longer exists. Since he's a damn good fic writer himself, I'll give a link to his profile instead, as a thank you for the effort when he did. It's at .net/u/347490/drakensis

Bubblegum Crisis belongs to Youmex and Animeigo, I make no claims otherwise. Please don't sue me, I have no money to speak of and fanfic does more to promote your products than anything else I know of - without it, I never would have known about anime at all, and I'd certainly never have bought the BGC tapes based on the sucky box copy.

Ranma 1/2 I'm not so sure of, except that the creator was Rumiko Takahashi, not me, and that I make no claims to own IT either. Likewise, Dragonball was created by Akira Toriyama, and is distributed in the US on video by FUNimation. I THINK that both Ranma and Dragonball comics are done by Viz in the US, but that may be incorrect.

I haven't a clue who owns Ah! Megami-sama! except that it's not me, and aside from the one cameo it's really not involved anyway.

The Bionic Six is similarly of unknown provenance, but I have a very vague and unreliable memory that it may have been animated by Suncoast video... In any case, it's STILL not my own creation.

_Dykstra's War_ is by Jeffery D Kooistra, published by Baen Books.

_Peace On Earth_ is by U2, from their album _All That You Can't Leave Behind._ It is awesome. Buy a copy.

EOF


	8. Chapter 4

**DOUBLE UPDATE! Make sure you read the so called "Xmas Special" as well - it''s not actually a holiday epissode, just set during a concert, as it takes a look at where the characters are at during the long break between Ch3 and Ch4.**

07_BD_WOASS_Ch_04

2010-11-16 - seriously, every time I go over one of these, I find a few more errors. I have no idea how professional editors can keep a production schedule, since I know (at least some) pro authors turn out stuff as bad or worse than my own technical quality.  
>2010-10-30 - fixed a stupid continuity error, minor gremlins<br>2009-11-25 - credits fix  
>2007-05-30 - finally fixed the relationship between Batgirl and the Commissioner, which I had misremembered.<br>01-16-2005 - more minor changes, found attribution for Highway Star.  
>12-24-2004 - minor fixes here and there, and added few lines to clean up a scene endings.<p>

(ASCII art batsignal goes here in the definitive, non-FFn, plain text version)

The familiar signal rolled over the ever-present high-level smog of Gotham City. It had been going for nearly thirty minutes, and Police Commissioner Gordon, now only days from retirement, turned away sadly to shut it off. "Looks like it wasn't a hoax after all," he sighed. It had been a forlorn hope anyway, with all the equipment that was recovered with the body...

As he pulled the handle, a shadowed figure in cape and cowl stepped out of the darkness, and he felt just a moment's hope flare, only to be extinguished as he recognized it for Batgirl.

"No, no hoax," she confirmed. "Robin and Nightwing have already stopped two revenge attempts on his wife and their child... she's being taken to a place of safety and given a new identity. Their butler... Alfred... died from a wound taken in the second attack just a few minutes before I left. He... He took a bullet... to save little Cecilia... "

Gordon suddenly realized that the reason Batgirl was having trouble talking, was that she was crying. She turned away and adjusted the mask to wipe at her eyes.

"It's kind of funny," she continued shakily. "I mean, here's this little old man, pushing a hundred and ten, whose biggest adventure in the past ten years was when a water pipe broke in the laundry room. Two card carrying superheroes in the same room, and he's the one who jumps in front of a gun while we're still in shock... He was a friend, sometimes a father figure for all of us, but now..."

He'd never be able to say why he'd done so afterwards, but it seemed the most natural thing in the world to go over to the young woman looking out over the edge of the roof, and gently hold her. He didn't try to look at her face; it didn't even occur to him. She leaned into him for a moment, then reached up to replace the mask, and shook loose. Jumping easily onto the railing, she retrieved one of the bat-grapples from her belt, then turned to look at him once more. "Thank you... Father. For just now, and for all the times you've helped us... for all the times you helped him. I have to get back now, but I wanted to let you know that you were as much my inspiration as Bruce." Before he could reply, she tipped backwards off of her perch and disappeared into the night.

"Barbara?" Weak-kneed from shock, the aging policeman stood gripping the ledge and looking into the night for several more minutes.

On a hill outside of Gotham, Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane was rocked by the third day of a riotous party the inmates had thrown when the news of Batman's death had been released. There were no neighbors nearby to complain, however; the space around it had been reserved for a cemetery in the name of having clear sight lines in case of an escape. The smog was thinner this far out, and enough moonlight penetrated to illuminate a new grave marker, still strewn with decorations from the funeral service. It was a marble pillar about five feet high, topped with a statue of the man whose grave lay below in his 'working clothes,' and a bronze plaque bore the legend,

HERE LIES BRUCE WAYNE

THE BATMAN

BORN 1967 DIED 2012

"To live and die in the name of justice is the greatest any man may strive for."

Bewilderbeast Studios Present

BUBBLEGUM DISASTER

Season One

WISHES ON A SHOOTING STAR

A work of BGC fan fiction by ClassicDrogn

Chapter Four

"That black car is at it again. Heading... west on the Bayshore near Haneda. All units in the vicinity respond at once. Don't lose him this time!"

Leon and his partner Daley were rolling along the top, eastbound level of that same highway in one of the special interceptor model ADP patrol cars, Daley at the wheel while Leon had the seat leaned back and arms crossed behind his head. Hearing the radio report, he asked, "Hey Daley, what'd he mean by 'that black car'?"

"Huh? You mean you didn't hear about it in today's meeting?" Somewhat surprised, Daley turned to look back at his partner for a moment - traffic was smooth, rolling at a sedate (and only modestly illegal) 100kph, leaving him little to fear.

"Naah, I was asleep," the recumbent inspector drawled.

Returning his eyes to the road, with a slight grin for his partner's antics, the redhead explained, "There's a rebuilt Griffon popping up around here at night that keeps trashing Outriders. No fatalities yet, so it's being treated as horseplay that's gotten out of hand. The Highway Patrol can't cope," he finished, scornfully.

"Heh! So someone's actually driving one of those antique Griffons..." Leon mused. There was silence in the car for a moment, save for road noise, and the rapidly increasing howl of a motorcycle engine.

"Huh?" Even as Daley noticed it, the bike zipped around them and through the light traffic ahead, moving at least 40kph faster than anyone else in sight. Anticipating a chase - nominally the THP's bailiwick, but perfectly legal for ADPolice officers when no bigger trouble loomed - Daley picked up speed a bit, but held off on the light bar as he said, "Whoa, look at that one go - looks pretty souped up."

"Yeah, I know." Supremely unconcerned, Leon tilted his head up a moment to look at the cyclist, then leaned back again as she got out of sight.

"wha?" Curious, Daley moved over to the fast lane and kept up the increased speed, but abandoned the idea of catching the speeder for now.

"She's my singing sweetheart," Leon clarified. A wide smile spread over his face for a few seconds, before the radio crackled again.

"Calling all ADPolice units. THP requests assistance. Respond if you're nearby."

"Man, what a buncha old ladies," he groused, sitting up and returning the seat to normal. With the other hand, he hit the toggles to turn on the lights and siren, advising, "Take this next ramp down to Kurosawa street; there's no lights at the bottom and it's usually empty enough we can swing right back up to the lower deck. The Griffon should catch up with us soon enough if he's moving as fast as you say."

As it turned out, they barely had to slow down to make the shift from one ramp to the other, Daley's considerable driving skills taking them around the corners in a single smooth curve, lights and siren clearing the way ahead of them.

Once on the westbound level, they shut the lights down again to avoid warning their prey off, and dropped down to legal speeds in the slower lane while traffic passed beside them, the engine growling as it was kept down to regular travel while the super-pursuit mode booster was engaged. Leon slipped off his wraparounds, snagged the radio handset, and twisted in his seat to keep an eye out behind them. "This is McNichol and Wong," he reported, "We're ahead of the disturbance waiting for them to catch up; we're going to try to slow him down so the cycles can escape. If anyone else thinks they can get here to help box him in, get a move on."

"Use caution Leon," the dispatcher warned, "the Griffon appears to have been armored, and has has shown no hesitation at causing collisions to evade pursuit."

"Rodger," the inspector acknowledged. "Here they come."

Sure enough, a trio of motorcycles tore up from behind, weaving around slower traffic as they desperately fled the black sports car chasing after them with a howl of supercharger turbines. It had allowed them to get ahead slightly, perhaps simply for the sport of it, but the lead gave the bikes time to get past and leave a bit of clear road for the ADP interceptor to swerve into its path as the lights started up again. Daley's mouth set in a hard line as the hopped-up patrol car dueled with the Griffon for a few endless seconds, the black car trying to slip around while Daley did his best to block it. In the distance behind them he could see the first flashes as THP cars began to catch up.

Apparently, the driver of the black car saw them too, as he backed off suddenly then surged ahead with a momentary squeal as one tire lost traction. Before the policeman could react it had slammed into the left corner of the interceptor and knocked it into a skid, rapidly falling behind the barely-marked Griffon as it spun out and slid along the concrete retaining wall, still moving at almost 130kph. Inside, Leon and Daley were flung against the straps of their seat belts, and Leon (without a steering wheel to hang on to) walloped his head on the side window. By the time they'd shaken off the shock, even the THP cruisers were long gone.

Rubbing his throbbing temple and eying the distinct lack of headlight beams on the tarmac ahead of the cruiser, Leon retrieved the microphone from where it had fallen into the foot well and sourly reported, "McNichol here. You were right about him going for a collision, damn it. Better get a wrecker out here, all our driving lights got taken out when he knocked us into the retaining wall." He shut down the siren but left the lights running to warn oncoming traffic of the damaged cruiser's presence, while Daley got them straightened out and over to the slow side of the highway.

With the passing of time, the threat of their identities having been exposed had proven to come to nothing, and along with the Sabers Doctor Raven had also returned to his normal life, reopening his garage and working on the vehicles of local residents and enthusiasts. Of course, the fact that the investigation of the Lady633 building's destruction had missed the (admittedly, well-hidden and now demolished) passage that had led from its subbasement garage to the Canyons area near his establishment had also helped considerably. Today, he was fixing the jammed seat of a compact car, while Mackie put the finishing torque on the bolts of his latest creation, a huge racing motorcycle needing only the nose cowl to be completely finished.

It was into this scene of relative tranquility that Priss rode on her red motoslave, the newly-minted racing bike catching her attention immediately, of course, though soon enough she returned to the business that had brought her today. "POPS! Hey, Pops!" she bellowed. "It's Priss! Is my new bike ready yet?"

Popping up from behind the vehicle that had hidden him from the entrance, the grey haired mechanic and inventor admonished, "Call me 'Doctor.' How many times do I have to tell you, call me 'Doctor!'"

Ignoring his bluster, the singer grinned and greeted, "There you are! How's the latest 'Raven Custom' coming, Pops?"

"Grr... DOCTOR!" he exclaimed, heading for his office briefly. His grouchy mood faded slightly as he listened to Priss sweet-talking Mackie into letting her give his machine a test ride.

Glancing through the clipboard where he kept paper copies of recent dealings with his suppliers, he listened to the snarl of the 700 horsepower twin turbo engine firing up, and came back just in time to see her let the clutch out a bit too fast and have the massive machine flip itself right out from under her, skittering upright on the squealing back tire with her staggering behind for a few seconds before her one-handed grip on the yoke slipped completely and the bike crashed to the concrete. A few loose chips of flooring material were knocked into the air as it sputtered and died.

"Strike one!" he proclaimed, as Priss cursed and Mackie nearly collapsed in dismay. He stepped back into the office to hang up the clipboard, returning to find Priss standing by the partially finished cycle on a rack against one wall.

"I swear, it shouldn't take so long to build one bike," she grumbled.

"Can't be helped," the doctor replied, stacking tools back into the box as he finished up with the car seat. "To get the performance you ordered it needs some difficult to find parts, and they haven't come in yet. You should be happy it's this far along, with all the excitement a few months back and my garage barely open again. At this point all I'm waiting on are oil-floatation bearings for the wheels and the control electronics, so it should only be another week or two."

Crossing her arms, the chestnut haired woman frowned, then sighed and straightened. "All right Pops, but try to wrap it up, okay? Sylia doesn't really like me using the heavy equipment so much, and it's not exactly street legal, ya know Pops?"

"'Doctor'," came the muffled reply, from the inside of the big tool kit.

"Huh?" she queried, not quite hearing.

"Call me 'Doctor!'" he irritably repeated.

"Okay, okay," she temporized, getting back on the motoslave and getting ready to go. "Thanks a lot, Pops, your bikes really are the best." Grinning mischievously as he growled in frustration, Priss - and Mackie too, for that matter - repeated in unison with him, "DOCTOR!"

Mackie watched her ride out of sight on the cycle-form motoslave, then said, "She really does like you, Doctor, it's just that she can't resist teasing, either."

"Humph," the older man huffed. Changing the subject, he indicated the racer Mackie had set back on its stand, and asked, "Your little project didn't take too much harm, I hope?"

Wincing and running his fingers along the scraped edge of an oil cooler, Mackie replied, "I don't think so, but I do wish she hadn't done that. I told her it wasn't really something anyone could ride..."

Smiling fondly, Dr. Raven suggested, "Repairs never look as bad after a bit of a break. Why don't you come into my office and have something to drink?"

"Sure, thanks!" Following his motorhead mentor into the back, Mackie looked around the office again while the old man rummaged in the small fridge in the corner. Taking note of a picture on the desk, he decided to finally ask about it - the doctor was a private person, but seemed to be in an expansive mood. Accepting the soda he was passed - his favorite brand, he noted - he turned the frame around to face both of them and asked, "Doctor, who is this? I've seen the picture a few times, but never got to asking you about it."

Taking a long swig from his own can, one of the better kinds of beer, Dr. Raven appeared to consider it for a moment, then wiped his lips and replied, "The young lady is Naomi Anderson, the daughter of an old friend of mine from my college days, along with your father. Heh, come to that, she might well have been your sister, if fate hadn't interfered and taken Amy away to Australia. The young man on the other side is her boyfriend, J. B. Gibson. Unfortunately the two of them were involved in some kind of auto accident six months ago, and I haven't seen much of them lately, except for Gib's occasional stops to get parts to fix his car. He seems to have made a real project of it, fixing it up even better than new."

Returning the photo to its original orientation, Mackie nodded thoughtfully and finished off his soda. "That's too bad. They look like nice folks, and from the little bit of car in the picture it looks pretty nice too. Well, I s'pose my bike won't fix itself... Hey Doctor, what do you think of calling it the Highway Star?"

"I think you've been listening to my music collection again. Good choice."

Moving with all the stealth she could manage while toting an extra hundred fifty pounds or so of armor and weapons, Priss dashed from one pile of rubble to the next as she made her way to the last semi-intact building in the area. Behind her, Linna did the same, making a bit less noise overall, despite the occasional awkward move as she tried to compensate for the different feel of a hardsuit after so long in weighted training clothes.

Moving in on the only building they hadn't already checked for their prey, the pair jumped in through an empty ground-floor window frame, then Priss made a quick jump jet leap up the flight of stairs to a landing, touching down facing up the next flight and ready to fire. Linna followed, leaping without the aid of jets to bounce off the wall and spring to the head of the stairs, but again misjudged the force needed and ended up soaring almost to the ceiling of the second floor, spotting Nene's helmet. She was peeking around the corner where the hallway beyond ended in a T, not expecting anyone to have come up so fast.

Firing the jets at last, Linna stretched the leap out to the end of the hall, tossing a grenade from the strap looped over one shoulder down the other end of the cross hallway Nene was in, in case an enemy was laying in wait down it, then bounced again off the far wall. As she rebounded, she grabbed Nene and pulled her back into the corridor at the head of the stairs as the explosion and smoke from the grenade washed across them from the other direction. "C'mon Priss, let's get 'em!" she urged, as the pink and blue suited Saber rolled away and to her feet, then took a fighting stance and struck back.

Priss hurried up the remaining stairs then paused, stunned, at the display of hand-to-hand fighting the other two were putting on in the hallway, her own weapon gauntlet not more than half-raised to fire. The ringing of armor on armor as punch met block met kick met parry almost drowned out the sound of the stairwell ceiling collapsing behind her, and before Priss could react the targeting system in Sylia's new armor suit - not really a hardsuit, since it relied on her own strength to move, though it looked much like her old suit with modified limbs - held a lock long enough to count her a kill. Linna quickly followed, though not before landing a hit that knocked Nene backwards through the thin interior wall, and was accounted as having blown her chest apart with the (deactivated) knuckle bomber. Looking at each other, Priss and Linna shared a shrug, then Priss grumbled, "Leave it to Sylia to sacrifice Nene..."

Rubbing at the armor over her chest, the redhead in question made a pained noise and complained, "That hurt for real, you know, crushing me against the chest plate like that. I'm delicate!"

"Both of you should be more careful," Sylia reprimanded, "this is only a training exercise after all, and both of your suits are going to need some repairs. For that matter, while your fighting skills are certainly becoming impressive, you both got too wrapped up in your duel too quickly and completely, losing track of the rest of your surroundings. In a real battle that could get us all killed." Linna and Nene just grumbled, while Priss continued to quietly steam.

From the shadows of a pile of rubble, Guardian 215 watched a very familiar blue armor suit assaulting a building, followed by a similar grey and green one that also matched some of the recovered portions of its memory. It did not stir, however, as it did not wish to draw attention to itself, at least until it had finished scouring the area for the remaining subprocessor memory units it had lost. Still, there was something important about that suit... Potential gains outweighed the risk, so a spare subprocessor was retrieved from storage and equipped with a minimal amount of still-scarce subcomponents and nanites to blend with the industrial setting of the city area, then instructed to follow the blue suit and report when contacted.

Without true will it could not 'hope' to find something related to its overriding mission, but it had been programmed for gathering information when objectives were unclear, and so its current goal was to recover what exactly that overall mission was. Anything that was even partially related to that mission in its damaged archives was therefore a possible link.

Listening to Priss and Linna chaffering over the expensive meal that had been 'at steak' (as she thought of it) on the day's training run, Nene remembered the last time she'd been in such a fancy place - it had been for her birthday celebration, right after the big Christmas Concert that Priss had gotten into, and gotten all of them backstage passes for. They'd all been surprised to learn that it really was her eighteenth birthday, as her previously false records indicated, because of the three years of subjective time she'd spent training with her parents in the Realm Between. Sylia hadn't believed it despite her added muscle definition, until they'd explained the pause in the teenage growth spurt that half-spirits had at her age, typically lasting five or six years until they shot up again to their adult stature. Of course, that might have had something to do with having had her FIFTEENTH birthday party all of four months ago, but eventually they'd all agreed that it was the amount of time she'd experienced that counted, rather than what the calendar might say.

Thinking about training brought her mind back to today's mock-battle, and she spoke up at last. "Sylia, it's really not all our fault that Linna and I were hitting so hard - I was trying to hold back, but it felt like the joints were too stiff or something, and I kept pushing harder to compensate. Linna said she felt the same thing."

"How odd," the steely-haired Saber leader replied. "That sounds like what I experienced when I tried adjusting the simulation suit to fit my current measurements and take new readings... But it can't be. I'll check the motion control systems when we get back to the shop, though I have to hope it won't be too costly of a problem. It's been a slow quarter." Seeing that Linna and Priss had begun paying attention, she continued, "Still, it must be nice to have all this free time to see your boyfriend, right Linna?"

Watching through the human's eyes as it finished another set of adjustments to its project, Orenok felt something rare for demons: True, pleased happiness. His new body was almost as complete as this fool could make it, and it was time to lay in another of the enchantments to prepare it. Grabbing the puppet's life-force he syphoned a bit off to power the spell. It knocked the human out for a few seconds, but that just spared the effort of blocking its memory, so he paid it no mind, quickly adding the required shapings to the enchantments already heavy around the vehicle, then curling back into its hindbrain, relaxing in the soothing warmth of its aura. His fierce bloodlust and exultation passed through to his host and amplified its own.

Straightening up in the newly replaced seat of his now barely-recognisable Griffon, J.B. Gibson laughed maniacally, an insane gleam in his too-wide eyes.

Linna hadn't been surprised when Priss called it an early evening - she never was much for gossip, and in a sour mood anyway from having had to cover half of the pricy meal. Finding her, battered and bloody, sitting on Linna's step beside a half-wrecked motoslave, however, was.

"Damn Linna, I thought you'd never get here... Aahaarg!" The singer cried out as she tried to stand, her badly abraded legs having set in position where she was slumped against the door. Linna sighed, then unlocked the door and helped her up, wrapping one of Priss's arms around her neck to support her over to the couch. Seeing her friend settled, Linna then wondered what to do with the motoslave... It wasn't exactly the kind of thing that should be left out in plain sight, even if it had gotten a set of tail lights and a license plate (technically a forgery, though it was a real plate with real registration for a custom cycle, added to the official databases by Nene) on the sides of the body, where they'd be out of the way when it had to transform, and could be easily removed for actual Knight Saber business.

Finally she shrugged, went back outside, and tried to wheel it up the steps, cursing and hefting it bodily when the front wheel started to come apart into its twin hover fan configuration. The whole frame sagged like an oversized cat in her arms, the hydraulic system lacking even static pressure. "What on earth did you get into now?" she wondered, wincing as she saw some mechanical fluid dribbling out onto the floor.

"Sorry, Linna," her unexpected guest mumbled from the couch. "Saw some bastard in a Griffon II tearing up some bikers... Couldn't let 'im get away with it. Hell, s'what I figured anyway... He still got away anyway after the 'slave got trashed."

"That's another question, how did you manage to wreck a motoslave when you didn't even have your suit to wear it?" Linna asked.

"They take voice commands too, remember? Just not very well, as it turns out. Look, lemme tell you the whole thing instead of playing fuckin' twenty questions, okay?" Priss really wished they could just drop it, but knew that was about as likely as finding an honest politician. "Anyway, I was riding around 'cause I was pissed at being broke this month, not really paying attention, and suddenly a bunch of Outriders burn past me like their asses are on fire. Turns out they've got a good reason for that; there's a hopped-up black sports car chasing 'em. Later on I saw a nameplate written along the door panel, it said 'Griffon II.' Anything you recognize?"

Linna barely had to think about it before finding an answer, sports cars and exotics being one of her hobbies. "Mmhmn, it was an import made by HMW-Auricom, mainly built for collectors. A pretty extreme machine right out of the showroom, are you sure it was modified?"

Priss scowled, then sarcastically replied, "Gee, I dunno, it only had a few dozen bunches of cables looped across the hood, and enough armor to barely notice ramming my motoslave through a brick wall. Yes, it was modified. After I checked on one of the bikers it knocked into the retaining wall, it OUTRAN the motoslave on the road, and I had to have it transform under me when the rear wheel ring-bearing died. I sent it to knock the bastard down the next off ramp while I went down the one right next to me, but by the time I caught up the asshole was backing away from the wall where he'd implanted the damn thing and drove off... It barely managed to get back into cycle mode to get me here."

Looking at the state of her friend's riding gear, torn out on the sides of both legs and one shoulder with scabbed over road rash on the exposed skin beneath, Linna figured that there was a fair amount of gloss on that story, but overall probably true enough. She sighed again, and warned, "You know Sylia isn't going to be happy about this, Priss..." Linna mentally counted up the Knight Saber charter articles she'd broken... again... and then dismissed the thought as unproductive.

"So don't tell her," the battered cyclist replied. "Tomorrow I'll take the damn thing over to Pops' and be outta your hair. He'll complain like he always does, and then he'll fix it, or I'll sweet talk Mackie into it."

Linna looked skeptical, but finished spreading a layer of newspaper and a couple of disposable plastic basins under the dribbling Typhoon and said, "Well, get some rest, anyway, and tomorrow we'll see."

Priss scratched at her knee where a patch of freshly applied synthskin itched fiercely, while she waited in the ADPolice lobby for Nene to show up and let her in. She turned to pace irritably, then held still as it itched again and the injury under the patch stung... She grumbled some more about not having needed to see a doctor, but Linna had been driving, and refused to leave the hospital until she'd had an examination.

The only upside to this was that now she was waiting for Priss outside, so her pay back would be swift and just, at least for the first installment. *What the hell is keeping that girl?* the singer wondered, growling quietly as she leaned beside the elevator bank.

Finally, Nene showed up and took her in tow, leading the singer back into the elevator as she asked, "So what brings you here, Priss, usually you avoid the police."

Priss nodded towards the control panel, and instructed, "Head for the computer room, okay? I need you look look up Griffons in the car registration database for me."

Nene sighed and entered the appropriate floor, then as the doors opened she pointed out, "You should do this stuff at Sylia's place. You can access computers from all over the world from there."

Doing her best to hide the limp from her abused knee, Priss shook her head and replied, "No can do, Nene." *I don't want her finding out about this until it's safely in the past,* she didn't say, instead adding, "Sylia won't let me use her system for personal business."

"Same here, Priss!" the redhead complained. "What do you think would happen if somebody caught us?"

"It'll be all right, I tell you," the singer placated. "C'mon, let's get a move on."

Nene let out a frustrated growl, then complained, "It's always something like this with you... Well, you can pay me back by taking me out to eat."

Thinking of her decidedly slim pocketbook, Priss groused, "Girl, all you think about is eating!" She let it drop as Nene booted up the terminal and pulled up the files with a quick search, and mostly ignored her cheery chatter in favor of reading the screen over her shoulder. As Nene had just observed, most of the owners were all pretty ancient, not people she'd expect to be up to any serious offensive driving. "An aging bunch of collectors, huh? Well, it was an import, aimed at enthusiasts..."

She considered how heavily modified the car had been, and wondered if it might be worth while to check one whose registration had expired after a wreck or simply during the garage stay. After all, there wouldn't have been any point keeping a car that would never be street legal again on the books... "Do you think you could pull up the list from three years back?" the singing Saber suggested.

"Sure, just a sec," Nene chirped, suiting actions to words. "There. We're up two, to a total of six!"

*Twenty eight and eighteen, now that's more like it,* Priss thought. "Okay, get me the full rundown on those two", she instructed.

Nene acknowledged, then brought up the first record. "This one changed hands two years ago. The current owner is James Birdie Gibson, age twenty eight. He had an accident six months ago and the registration was purged this spring, after it expired." Finally connecting the scuttlebutt about a rebuilt Griffon that was making a mess on the highways, Nene made a mental note to pass this data along to Leon when they wrapped up - she'd heard that his car had been wrecked in a confrontation with it. She wondered how Priss had run afoul of it for an instant, then realized that was a silly question if it was targeting motorcyclists.

Looking unusually studious, Priss asked, "What can you tell me about that accident?"

"Hmm, let me see," the redhead muttered, working the terminal's chording keyboard. "What the? There's a protection block on that level..." A moment's thought gave her the answer, and she perked, "Oh, hold on. I know, I have the Chief's voice on disk!" Producing a voice memo card from a pocket, she played back the sound clip - taken while Chief Todo had been answering the phone - and placated the system. "There, now we're cleared for Level Four."

"Damn, you're good," Priss complimented, honestly impressed. "Let's see... A passenger vehicle driven by J. B. Gibson was waylaid on the upper deck of Highway Five by the Outrider gang and impacted with a guard rail. He was seriously assaulted, suffered five compound fractures... His passenger, Naomi Anderson, was also hospitalized, suffering from extreme shock..." Ignoring Nene's gasp as she read the details of the injuries, the chestnut haired singer studied the supplied photograph of the owner. *J. B. Gibson,* she thought to herself. It was certainly no surprise he preferred to initialize that middle name... and it was the same man she'd seen at the hospital, with the girl who had freaked out when a pack of bikers drove by outside. This would bear further investigation.

Just then, the sharp click and hiss of the door unlatching and sliding open startled both of them, giving just an instant's warning before Leon poked his head in. "Who the hell's in here?" he wondered, his wraparounds turning the dimly lit interior into impenetrable gloom. Faintly, he made out movement lit by an active terminal screen, and a muttered exclamation before whoever it was shut it down and stepped his way. Recognizing her outline as she moved, he put on his best knock-'em-dead grin and greeted, "Oh, it's you Nene. What are you doing?"

"Oh, I'm, ah, just running an inquiry into the data on the... McPherson case," the cute redhead improvised.

He nodded slightly, not that he recognized the case, but what else would she be up to? He was suddenly struck by just how CUTE she was and asked, "So, are you free after work?"

Suppressing the urge to facepalm - or give him a good smack, she wasn't sure which - Nene fell back again on her inherited (ahem) skill at improvisation. "Oh, my mom'll get mad if I don't go straight home," she explained, before ducking under the lean detective's arm and heading out. She'd just have to come back for Priss after he left...

Confused a bit by the reply - hadn't she just rediscovered her family, living in another city? - Leon replied, "Oh, okay... Uh, say hi to Mom for me..." before going back to his own concerns.

The demon Orenok had been delving into his puppet's memories again, and come across another of the humans' recently invented, fascinating devices... Something called a 'gun.' He'd inserted a compulsion to obtain one in his slave, and had spent the last few minutes examining it with his own senses. It was a cunning piece of craftsmanship, and for a moment even he, the master of all things Stone and Metal, was impressed with how skillful the humans' smiths had become. Dismissing the sensation, he roused the human and ordered it to demonstrate the weapon, watching as something like a miniature fire-spell inside it propelled a small chunk of lead with great force, enough to leave a pit when it slammed into the poured stone wall. It must be a very efficient spell indeed, as he couldn't even detect any magical bleed as it went off. A small tube that had carried the lead and the spell's reagents was ejected from one side, and the next moved into place to be rapidly cycled through again.

Most impressive, though useless against anything without a physical presence, and too limited in the number of times it could be used - a simple combat spell, or a wand enchanted with one to use less time and energy was far more practical. He quashed the human's concern for its mate as she squawked at the noise of the demonstration and let it continue until the device ran out of ingredients a few seconds later, then released it with the command to finish with the new body. He grew tired of waiting, and his power had grown to where no guardian would be able to threaten Orenok's fun.

Soon, there would truly be a wailing and gnashing of teeth among the humans, and a river of blood to quench his thirst.

Some hours later, it was complete, save for the final enchantment to finish its form and 'close the door' once he took possession of it as his new body. Orenok cast one last spell from his human puppet - a reversed warding, to prevent spirit beings from entering the space, and drive off those with good intent - and abandoned it to begin settling in to his new frame. Confused, it wandered off, taking no notice of him. He took no notice of it, busy as he was... So busy in fact, that when the human and its mate returned a few minutes later, activated the shell, and drove off in it, he was too involved to notice beyond that his engine 'heart' had started early.

Sylia had been experimenting with a new nail polish, slightly metallic violet to match her new eye color, when she'd accepted the call from Priss, and calmly finished applying it while she listened to the singer's request from Doctor Raven.

"... so anyway, they'll be a disaster unless we save them," Priss wrapped up. "Sylia, are you listening to me?"

"I got it," the Saber leader replied. "So what about our fee?"

"NO problem..." the crimson eyed woman replied, the pause giving her earnest tone of voice the lie before continuing more brightly. "No problem! Pops says he'll upgrade our motoslaves for free."

"Hey, I didn't say word one about any such thing!" the man in question yelled indignantly, pushing his way into the camera's field of view.

"Big deal!" she countered, shoving him back off the side playfully. "For you, that's cheap!"

Chuckling softly at their antics, Sylia assented, "Well okay, we could hardly refuse a request from *Doctor* Raven. Meet me here and we'll load up the special equipment."

Orenok's consciousness emerged from the deep concentration of extending his being through the structure of the human's golem vehicle and connecting to it to find that it was not in the sealed, prepared safe zone of its workshop, but hurtling through the streets of the city dodging lesser constructs and pursued by the local watchmen. Enraged at the temerity of his erstwhile puppet, he moved to complete the process and take full control, only to 'butt heads', metaphysically speaking, with the human currently in command, making both of them reel momentarily.

While it recovered control and crashed back out of the shop the car had entered during the momentary lapse, the demon pulled back, trying to determine how a mere human mind could resist him, and furious that it had done so, frustrating him in what should have been his moment of triumph.

Sylia had been waiting in the hidden garage level when Mackie, Priss, and Linna had arrived, her brother having borrowed the light truck and trailer belonging to Raven's Garage to transport the Highway Star. As he connected it to the motoslave launch/load arm of the Sabers' mobile HQ trailer, she asked, "What kind of motorcycle is that?"

Seeing that he was too preoccupied fitting it with a pair of wheelie bars, Priss answered, "Mackie built it. It's the only thing we've got that can catch the Griffon."

Sylia let a small smile cross her face before straightening from where she'd been leaning against the cab of the mammoth vehicle. She brushed her steely hair over her shoulders, then replied, "Perhaps not the *only* thing."

"What do you mean, Sylia?" Linna asked. "I don't think a regular motoslave is going to be fast enough for it." *Especially since it already ran Priss's into the ground last night,* she thought privately.

Moving to one of the shorter, side walls of the garage, Sylia worked a control behind a group of cables attached to an exposed junction box. "You already know the story of how Father invented buma technology and then had it stolen from him; but Katsuhito Stingray was not my biological father, only Mackie's. The man I knew as Daddy died before Mother returned to Japan... and he left a somewhat different legacy for me."

As she spoke, a second hidden door had rumbled upward to reveal a still deeper garage level, a myriad of oddly shaped items visible in the gloom. As banks of lights came up, the other Sabers noted several display dummies dressed in unusual costumes, a rack of strange weapons, mostly unrecognizable, and what seemed to be a huge United States penny from before they were phased out in 2009.

In the center of the space, though, was a long, low shape - a vehicle, from the wheels peeking out from the edges - covered by a tarp, which was slowly rising on cables as winches whirred overhead. Linna had followed her in as the door opened, and the dark haired girl's breath caught as her eyes fastened on a stylized bat insignia on the hubcap. Her jaw dropped and she stumbled forward as if pulled on a string, one hand reaching out to caress the gleaming, blue-black finish before turning back to face Sylia. For her part, the White Saber was wearing a decided, I-just-love-springing-surprises smirk.

"Is... Is this real?" Linna stuttered. She got only a nod in reply, then blurred and vanished.

Sylia let out a surprised squawk as the lean dancer rematerialised in front of her, a hand on each of the White Saber's shoulders and a pleading expression on her face. "Oh my GOD Sylia, You've GOT to let me drive it! Talk about the ultimate high-performance sports car..."

Gently shaking herself free, Sylia schooled her expression and replied, "Not this time, at least. We're going to need someone flying in a motoslave for air cover. The Griffon has proven adept at slipping away from ground pursuit, and frankly we may need the firepower, given how thoroughly it dealt with Priss's motoroid."

Behind her, Priss pulled up short, a guilty look fleeting past before she turned a glare on Mackie, despite the fact that she'd been with him constantly since she and Linna had arrived at Raven's Garage and asked them to deal with it quietly.

Before she could say anything, Linna continued, "Please, can't I at least ride with you? Where's Nene? She can take her new motoslave out instead."

Shaking her head slightly, Sylia countered, "She'll be remaining at AD Police headquarters to keep us updated and allow us to work in concert with their own plans and movements. Mackie, you'll be driving the Mobile HQ to launch the cycles. Priss will take Mackie's Highway Star and be the primary contact, while I'll be as close as possible in the Batmobile to back her up, especially if it becomes a matter of vehicular combat. Linna, Nene says that the ADP plan is to drive the Griffon to a barricade somewhere on the Bayshore Highway; you'll have to head directly there to get in range at the speed this chase will be moving. Nene will contact us again when she has an exact location. All right everyone?"

Priss growled her agreement while Linna just looked resigned, and Mackie gave his latest creation a worried look before nodding.

"All right, then. Knight Sabers, let's go!" Sylia had moved beside the gleaming black car and worked some unnoticed control as she spoke, and as the aircraft-like cowl over the Batmobile cockpit finished sliding forward she vaulted agilely on one hand into the seat - the left hand one, since it had been designed for use in the US.

Of course, both seats were so close to the centerline that there would be little problem driving on either side of the road, but Linna had to admit, the arrangement would have thrown her off some, and that would not be something they could afford on a mission. She still sighed longingly at the sexy, full-throated growl of the huge Lycoming under that long hood as the Saber leader started the engine, but climbed aboard the grey semi without looking back.

Dusk had fallen long before the chase had even begun, but while the evening rush as such was over, Megatokyo's streets were far from empty. The Griffon paid little mind to traffic as it accelerated down a straightaway, however, straddling the center line and only weaving enough to one side or the other to avoid hitting anything large head-on. Normal cars and even light delivery trucks were bashed aside carelessly, light alloy and plastic frames practically crumbling on contact with the heavily armored juggernaut in their midst. A trio of oncoming Traffic and Highway Police cruisers were piled up like leaves before a rake as it suddenly went into a skew-turn, skidding sideways and driving them backwards before slipping free with a screech of torn sheet metal and heading down a side street. The glossy black Armornamel that Gibson had spent most of the previous day spraying onto the Griffon's Ceramel hide had acquired a single, long scratch from a newly-protruding cruiser frame member, but the armor itself was undamaged.

Within his shell of alloyed pourstone and metal (So very clever, the humans of this age! He'd simply have to spare some of them until they were made to share their secrets) Orenok barely noticed the impact, intent as he was on seizing control from that... that fleshy *worm* who had *dared* to take command of his new body. Trying and failing again to activate the web of controlling spells he'd created to be its nervous system, he traced the shape of the interfering signals and finally realized what the problem was. The myriad traceries of tiny crystals with their precise impurities and fine wires of copper, aluminum, and gold that he'd assumed to merely be the trappings of some foolish human attempt at his own command of all things mineral, trappings that he'd preempted the enchantment of in favor of his own direct controls, were nothing of the sort, or at least no recognizable magic. Instead, they were controls in their own right, tiny lightnings traveling through them to compel the components without a trace of mana flux. In the process they not only overrode his own commands, but reinforced the human's own mind to the point that it was nearly equal to his own in the mental shoving match for control.

The problem identified, the solution was obvious - destroy the otherwise useless wires and controls - but doing so would require careful modification of the web of sorcery he'd laid down for his own use, or it would be disrupted as well. With his spiritual being already permeating and tied to the machine, and even more so with it outside of the protective cocoon of the human's workshop, Orenok simply could not afford any additional delay; not when any guardian spirit or even a rival demon would find him all but defenseless until he could complete the possession. Worse still, the idiot human seemed bent on destroying itself and his new body with it, leading the watchmen's vehicles on a crazy chase up through some sort of huge stable for the things, then crashing through a low pourstone wall on the top floor to arc out far above the street and its flaming wreckage, defying foolhardy odds to land heavily on the elevated roadway beside it.

Sylia had wiggled out of her civvies once underway, the Batmobile's auto-drive serving her as it had her natural father and his series of partners. She hadn't donned a hardsuit, however - the tight confines of the cockpit wouldn't allow for even the limited bulk of the advanced Knight Sabers suits, even if feet in six inch spike heels could operate the pedals - but neither was she dressed in some approximation of a batsuit. Instead she'd opted for a fire resistant racing jumpsuit, reinforced with a clamshell of bulletproof hard armor on the upper torso and a similarly constructed helmet. It would do little more than deflect ricochets and spalling against the kind of heavy weapons some of their opponents carried, but if she was forced to ditch it would protect her identity as long as she could avoid getting physically detained, and once immediate pursuit was lost simply tossing the helmet and armor in a dark alley would leave her in a plausible white runner's jumpsuit with two-tone blue trim.

Now, however, the overhead highway lights speeding by gave a counterpoint to the steady glow of the Batmobile's instruments as she followed the Mobile HQ and listened to Nene's interception instructions.

"Do you read me?" the ADPolicewoman asked, over the radio link. Her voice was slightly hushed, but no more so than any other dispatcher, and from the background noise it seemed she was right in the ADP dispatch room, one of many directing mobile units to the same end. She continued, "The Griffon's on the upper deck of highway number four. ADPolice is ready and waiting, they've set a trap on eastbound Bayshore One but they've got to chase him down Loop Highway number nine!"

Nodding to herself, the Saber leader replied, "Got it, thanks. You heard her Priss, Gibson's a goner unless we stop him before he hits the Bayshore." She could see Priss's helmet bobbing as well over the small monitor built into the dash.

"Okay, let's do it," the singer affirmed. On either side of the nondescript grey semi's trailer, a wide bay door opened upward, and a launch boom extended with a heavy motorcycle on the end. To the right, Linna held one finger over the command key to transform her green motoslave for flight as soon as the arm disengaged, to the left Priss revved the Highway Star to spin up the drive wheel and avoid a skid. As the arm disengaged she expertly rode it down the remaining two feet and took off, newly added wheelie bars keeping it tracking straight until the nose dropped and she could *really* open it up. Her exultant cry was drowned out by the challenging snarl of the engine as it wound up, the speedometer slipping past 120kph in less than seven seconds and still going.

Behind her, Sylia pulled the Batmobile out from behind the Mobile HQ, its supercharged aircraft engine giving an answering bellow as it hurled nearly two tons of advanced composites, titanium, and assorted gadgetry forward in the racing cycle's wake, just far enough behind to avoid the worst turbulence of its passage.

Far down the highway - but getting closer every second - the ADPolice had gathered a dozen yards behind where the normal roadblock manned by the THP had been set up with a novel addition: a decommissioned ex-JSDF tracked command vehicle, originally detached to their department when it was first formed and had used regular military hardware rather than the purpose-built equipment it now had. The heavy armored vehicle hadn't been used in almost three years due to the damage it tended to do to pavement merely by passing over it, but there'd been time to deploy it tonight and by reversing one tread it had been turned completely broadside to the road. Behind that, a transport truck was setting up a pair of Firebee mini-copters, and as the ground crew made the final checks and strapped the pilots into place, Daley left them to join his partner on top of the command vehicle. Leon was scanning the highway as it curved away around the bay with a pair of binoculars, but lowered them and slipped his shades back on shortly. "Getting this hunk of scrap up here must have really taken some doing, eh?" he remarked. The two of them had arrived to find it already on the scene, having been almost on the city line to the west and in a normal squad car when the call had come in.

"Yeah," Daley replied. "Nobody's gonna just waltz up here and punch through armor like this, uh uh, no way." After hearing how the Griffon had burst through the retaining wall at the top of a parking garage he'd begun to have doubts about how effective a normal blockade - even the relatively heavy, composite reinforced and concrete based jersey barriers the ADP kept on hand to contain rampaging buma - could possibly be. 'Old Shelly's' massive presence was a great reassurance, and he stomped one heel against her upper armor to emphasize the point.

A confident grin crossed Leon's face briefly as he confirmed, "Tonight's the end of the road for that bastard." Hearing the Firebee's blades winding up, they turned to watch them launch and fly off beside the highway to find and track the ongoing chase, which Dispatch reported had just taken the last turn needed to bring it into their trap.

Still trying to stop the Griffon on their own, a pair of ADP cruisers had formed up to occupy both lanes of the highway, then waited for the Griffon to catch up to them. Looking back, one of the drivers lost control and spun out, crashing into the guardrail and flipping upside down before skidding to a halt, his companion pulling ahead before he could react. Mere seconds later, the Griffon roared past, clipping the inverted police car and making it spin like a top, only the special reinforced cage keeping the roof from collapsing entirely to crush the officer inside.

Abandoning the chase to the waiting blockade the second car backed up to the scene of the crash, pulling to a stop just ahead of it. The driver jumped out and moved to check on his unfortunate comrade, while his partner stood beside their cruiser to look down the road as he reported in. He'd just tossed the microphone back through the window and settled his rifle on a shoulder when a blue blur riding a red blur blasted past with a howl of high-performance engine and a back draft strong enough to knock him off his feet. The tumbling rifle barely had time to bounce once on the roadbed, the ready round firing into the underside of the road above, before getting batted over the side by a much larger black blur, whose back draft sent the hapless officer sprawling a second time.

Focussed on altering the web of spells woven into the Griffon during its reconstruction, Orenok had paid scant heed to the human, its mate, or even the other humans who'd caught up with it briefly riding their own mechanical mounts. The ground-bound ones had fallen back after its boosters were engaged, while the flying machine had swept too close to a column and wrecked itself. Finished, the demon waited for his moment. He struck as the female distracted his former puppet, destroying its controlling devices and turning them into bindings, and putting out the fool's eyes as punishment for daring to oppose his takeover of this magnificent new body. Crackling energy flared in and around it as well, the lightnings that had powered those controls dissipating.

Even as they did, the human on the smaller pursuing machine drew close again, then jumped to his own upper surface leaving it to tumble and crash while it tried to signal the humans carried within him. Furious, but unable to complete the ritual until the energy bleed finished, Orenok seethed as the interloper opened a seam in the top of the cabin - it had been planned as part of the transformation anyway, but such impertinence stung like acid - and entered, immediately setting to work freeing the ones within.

Linna had entered the subway network at Kameido station, flying the motoslave through the tunnel fast enough that there was more danger she'd catch up to a train than be run down by one. A grenade from the underslung launcher on its machine cannon had sufficed to blow a barricade and let her into a section of the old, pre-quake subway system, and she gave it the last bit of throttle as she raced toward the break where this tunnel would exit into the Kanto Canyons a stone's throw from the highway. She could hear Priss reporting that the Griffon was completely out of control, but couldn't spare any concentration from threading the needle, the air displaced by her passage rebounding from the walls of the narrow tunnel and buffeting the motoslave like its namesake, typhoon.

Finally she was clear, and pulled up as sharply as she could without losing speed to rendezvous with the oncoming vehicles. As the green Saber drew level with the roadbed she could see the lights - and booster flares - of the two black cars hurling closer. "I'm almost in position," she reported.

Over the commlink, Sylia added, "Priss, try to hold out until Linna can catch you rather than jumping to the Batmobile - it has far less in the way of handholds than the Griffon, and you can't afford a slip carrying those two."

Perched precariously atop the runaway sports car, Naomi and Gibson held under her arms, Priss looked wildly around, then exclaimed, "Sylia, I can't even SEE her!"

"Just get ready," Linna warned. "You're moving even faster than I can, so it'll be close... GO!"

Still less than reassured, but trusting her team mates' judgment, Priss kicked off, the last few tendrils of energy groping after her blindly. For a moment she thought they wouldn't make it, the Batmobile having passed under her leap as drag slowed her, and one toe-tip did strike sparks for a fraction of a second before the comfortingly massive arms of the motoslave wrapped around all three of them and carried them to a gentle halt. Letting out the breath she didn't remember holding, Priss jibed, "What kept you?"

Leon hadn't been able to believe his eyes when the Firebee had - all too briefly - sent its gun camera feed of what was heading toward his position, but the proof was before him now: the Griffon had crashed through the modular barricade as he'd been half expecting, and right behind it was the Batmobile. The actual, made in USA, straight out of the history books, lost for decades BATMOBILE. It had braked with side-mounted jets to avoid crashing into Old Shelly like the Griffon had, and even as he watched a fat, squat gun lifted on a servo arm from behind a panel and shot a sticky glob at each of the Griffon's rear wheels, putting a stop to their squealing as it tried to shove the massive command carrier aside.

Swallowing his shock and donning his sunglasses, he waved the armor-clad officers forward, advancing cautiously on the Griffon even as it seemed to slump in belated reaction to the impact. "Hold it!" he shouted, as a red flare played over the car's surface. "Keep your distance men, it looks like -"

He never did get to say what it looked like, but unless the inspector had been feeling very imaginative indeed it was unlikely to have been accurate anyway. With a shudder and a scream of tearing metal and breaking glass, the heavily modified sports car started coming apart at the seams, cables slithering as armor plates shifted and reformed. The roof of the cab shredded open wider, crazed windows hanging in sheets as it swept up and to either side like a pair of misshapen wings, the massive turbine and engine block sliding forward through the cleared space. The nose and sides of the car split into sections, the ramming grille becoming wicked claws attached to powerful forelimbs, matching hind feet folding out from where the side panels had become hind legs. The tubes of the booster jets flexed and extended backward, twining together into a muscular tail, tipped with a 'tuft' of guttering reddish flames. Finally, the intake manifold of the massive engine lifted on a serpentine neck of cable, and a cruel, hooked beak slipped up into place. The vehicle that had been a Griffon in name had transformed into an armored, vicious looking griffon in fact, and it screeched defiance as it stretched and tested its wings. Misshapen no more, they now resembled the wings of a bat, metal spars supporting a membrane of broken glass, and the ring of policemen had to fight to stay upright against the backwash as they beat the air.

"My god..." Leon breathed incredulously. The wind was bad enough, but a palpable wave of menace washed out from the huge, monstrous beast, and it was almost more overwhelming. "OPEN FIRE!" he ordered, "Shoot for the engine and head!"

The griffon snarled again and ignored the bullets spanging harmlessly off its hide, but the twin lasers that followed them, fired from a pop up turret on the Batmobile, were a different matter. Orenok hissed angrily and spun back to the command vehicle, sinking the claws of its forelimbs into the side armor and tearing it apart with a mighty heave. A few more swipes as it bounded forward and it was through the hulking obstacle, the Firebee truck beyond less than a trifling distraction as the demon charged through the wreckage to get some fighting room.

Sylia had been as flabbergasted as the ADPolice as the Griffon twisted and reformed, but recovered even faster than Leon, and had already activated the lasers when he called to open fire. "Linna, Priss, get here as soon as you can," she ordered, "it's turned into some kind of beast-buma, and I'll need backup."

They acknowledged, and Nene added, "The Chief just scrambled a K-11 squad, but they won't be there for eight to ten minutes, Sylia."

"Understood." The Saber leader kept up the barrage as long as possible, then scraped through the breach herself with a little help from the boost jet. She kept it burning on the other side as well, homing in to ram the griffon's legs as it dug in its claws and turned, then zooming past and away down the empty highway before pulling a bootlegger reverse and screaming back towards it. A new barrage of laser fire swept out before her, leaving deep scores on the beast's chestplate, originally an armored oil pan judging by its shape and location.

Rearing on his hind legs, Orenok snarled in a voice like an erupting volcano, "HUMAN FOOL! DO YOU THINK THAT JUST BECAUSE THE SHELL OF YOUR VEHICLE IS NOT OF METAL OR STONE THAT I CANNOT REACH IT? LEARN NOW THE ERROR OF YOUR WAYS." He made a clawing gesture with one forelimb and Sylia was jerked painfully against the seat belt as the Batmobile suddenly flipped up on its nose and took to the air, slamming into the upper deck before falling back to the pavement.

Stunned, she was barely able to focus as the front half of the car disintegrated, splinters of carbon fiber and spectra composite armor flying as the Lycoming died screaming, its aluminum block torn in half and hurled away to either side by the demon's control over metals. Coordination still off from the impact, the Saber leader fumbled futilely at the release for her five-point harness as the supernatural monstrosity strutted closer, his claws digging deep pits in the road surface. He chuckled evilly as he came, tail flicking in amusement, then hooked one claw under the edge of the cockpit coaming, the other foreleg holding the remains of the world's single most famous car as he ripped the canopy off with a contemptuous twist.

Suddenly realizing that the instruments were still lit, Sylia stabbed the firing key for the laser turret. Its twin barrels spoke one final time, draining the capacitor bank that fed them to blast Orenok point blank, slagging the side of his head where he'd turned it to peer at the lowly worm who'd dared to give challenge. He bellowed in enraged pain and stumbled backwards, one forepaw covering the empty socket as it dibbled sparks and broken glass. Blinded by pain, the griffon never even noticed Leon's barrel-fired rocket propelled grenade coming until it impacted squarely on the knee joint of one hind leg, the same one Sylia's ramming attack had already damaged, blowing it apart and sending the demon sprawling as it overbalanced.

A second fusillade of machine-gun fire lashed out from the police line, this time concentrated on the griffon's remaining eye and the cables of its neck, prompting another frustrated roar as Orenok thrashed back up to his feet, tail whipping madly for balance. Off to the side, Sylia took the chance to regain her bearings, release her restraints, and bail out, using her newly enhanced strength to leap further away from the line of fire. As she did, she congratulated herself for the precaution of wearing a helmet with a mirrored visor that would protect her identity, including a voice scrambler like the one built into her old hardsuit. She jumped just in time, even as her feet left the Batmobile's armored flank one of the monster's claws scraped across the back plate of her clamshell armor, throwing off her landing.

Before he could follow up the attack and regain the initiative, a second RPG whistled in from Leon's position, closely followed by one from Linna's motoslave and a flight of rail spikes from Priss. The miniature rockets scored good hits, blasting away several neck cables and damaging the narrow spine between the griffon's barrel chest/engine and hips. Even so the railspikes did the worst damage as they drove through the chest plate and into the engine itself. Linna herself came hurtling in on the heels of the shots, having left the motoslave behind in the name of mobility. Her knuckle bomber took out the demon's remaining eye, and as she rebounded an acrobatic flip wrapped charged monoribbons around its spine where the grenade had weakened it. They cut deep, but didn't sever it as she'd expected, and the tension jerked her up short.

Trapped by her own weapon as Orenok again thrashed in pain, she only barely managed to avoid being crushed beneath his bulk as the griffon collapsed onto his back. Indeed, one of his own wings was so caught, its thin spars snapped like so many twigs. Charging the ribbons again, Linna braced her legs and heaved, succeeding this time in separating the griffon's forequarters from its hips. Orenok's scream became a thin, reedy whine, and the fires at the tip of his tail went out.

He scrabbled futilely at the pavement as she leapt away, then spoke again, voice weaker but still almost unendurably loud and rough. "UNBELIEVABLE! THAT MERE HUMANS COULD DO SUCH DAMAGE TO MY PERFECT NEW BODY... I WILL RETURN TO TAKE BLOODY VENGEANCE FOR THIS INSOLENCE, MARK MY WORDS. LOOK ON THIS FOOL'S FATE AND TREMBLE!" Sightless eye sockets tracked Saber Green with eerie accuracy, and again he clenched one forepaw in a grasping motion, seizing the lightweight alloy of her hardsuit and jerking it to a stop midair. Linna struggled for a moment, then screamed in agony as her shell of battle armor crushed inward, one limb after the other, then finally the torso, all contracting and deforming to assume the shape of the body beneath even as they squeezed it with crushing force. Blood trickled out of the ruptured joints, and he finally allowed her to drop, falling like a marionette with cut strings.

Even a few of the hardened police officers were violently sickened at the sight, while Priss and Sylia were frozen with horror. The singer's voice echoed over the Knight Saber net, "... son of a bitch, son of a bitch, son of a BITCH!" She hadn't quite managed to move when a growing glow from the white Saber's direction drew her eye, and fresh shock kept her in place. She'd seen Sylia practicing the new abilities she'd gained in the wake of her incredible recovery, and the wispy cerulean glow of secondary, radiant light as she formed some construct of otherwise invisible energy had grown familiar in the past few months, but she'd never seen it so bright, nor so widespread. Overhead, the sodium vapor lights - miraculously undamaged thus far - began to fliker and die out, and as their glows faded entirely the roadway was lit only by the lumious cloud of energy, a cloud that had begun doing something Priss had never yet seen it do.

The police fire had died as magazines ran out and needed replacement, though several officers seemed more worried about the lightshow going on around the Batmobile's driver than the seemingly defeated and quiescent griffon. While the woman wasn't wearing the signature hardsuit, the color scheme of her jumpsuit and body armor certainly suggested this was Saber White, given that Blue and Green were working with her. Watching now as the diffuse glow began to break up and condense into bands around her, Leon wondered just what might have happened to her in the wake of the terrible pounding he'd arrived just too late to do anything about a few months before.

A thin, glowing layer had stuck to her form, giving her an ethereal look as the bright blue-white bands contracted, spinning ever faster as they shifted to orbit one arm. She raised the hand, fingers spread, and spoke in a voice that dripped liquid nitrogen. "You won't be coming back. The only vengeance for today will be *this*," she intoned. Leon was suddenly very glad he'd kept his sunglasses on as the glow suddenly collapsed into a blindingly brilliant hairline from her palm to the griffon, cutting it off mid-snicker with a crack like a high powered rifle. He'd blinked in time to save his sight, but even through his eyelids the beam - whatever it had been - had traced an afterimage and wrecked his night vision. He could hear the riot armored troopers cursing as their optics overloaded.

As the overhead lights came back up, he pulled the shades off and blinked furiously. He could just make out a wavering flicker of blue around the griffon's detached forequarters. It faded as his vision finally cleared, and for a moment he thought it had just turned the beast's surface light grey, until the damaged neck crumbled and collapsed. The weight of the falling head shattered the body as well, the whole thing disintegrating into a pile of glassy chunks and sand.

That done, the Saber leader walked briskly over to her fallen team mate and gently reached out to lift her into a fireman's carry. Before she could do so, an oily, bluish portal formed in the air between her and the motionless AD Police officers. Hiryuko Kagami leaned through it and chanted a quick spell to levitate Linna's motionless form, then withdrew with it and let the portal close.

Nodding, Saber White brushed her hands against the legs of her jumpsuit, turned and walked with that same brisk step toward the green motoslave, still standing by in Independent Combat mode near Priss. She reached out and triggered a concealed control, causing it to collapse back into its motorcycle form, and motioned sharply for Priss to join her.

Shaking off immobility with a policeman's trained habit, Leon stepped in front of the motoslave, beginning, "Now hold on, I'm going to have to ask you a few..."

Sylia stopped him with a single pointed finger, a faint blue glow forming at the tip. That same, arctic voice commanded, "Move."

Leon moved. The doubled-up Knight Sabers drove off into the night, and Daley strode over from where he'd been keeping the regular officers out of the confrontation. "You're really going to catch it for letting them go again, you know," he commented. "Especially since the white one seems to have gone bumaroid after getting beaten up last time."

"Maybe," his partner replied, "but whatever may have happened to her, that was a woman on the edge just now, and judging by the evidence, pushing her over it would have been the worst thing I could do." Holstering his Redhawk, Leon rubbed his wrist ruefully. .475 Magnum was NOT a gentle round in the first place, and the grenades only made it worse. *Heh... Can't argue with the effect, though,* he thought. Sighing, he rolled his shoulders in an attempt to release their tension, and lamented, "Well, we might as well get started on clearing the highway again. It's only six hours until the morning rush, and all the paperwork we just made will still be there afterwards." Looking up as he heard the distinctive roar of an ADP heavy aerodyne overhead, the brown-haired inspector barked an ironic laugh, then finished, "Ah, looks like the K-suits are here. They can help get this junk outta the way."

It had been dangerous to move Linna through the Realm Between, Hiryuko reflected as she drew a ritual circle around the blood-dripping, still form on the floor. Not so much because Tora had been nearby, finishing off that earth demon after it had been driven from its shell, as because if the dancer had lost her tenuous hold on life while physically present in it, her soul might have dissipated entirely and would surely have gotten lost even if it did not.

Finishing the inscription, she stepped to the casting position, then chanted a spell of disintegration. Sickly greenish energy played briefly over the ruin of what had once been cutting edge powered armor, and it thinned and faded away like so much smoke, the softsuit beneath following. Hiryuko kept her eyes closed as soft squelching sounds marked the settling of her charge's abused body, focusing her attention inward as she drew all of her power forward to use for an Ultimate Restoration. As she began the complex incantation, she could only hope the amplification circle she'd drawn would let her finish before the energy drain left her unconscious.

Slumped against Priss's back as the blue Saber threaded them through alleys and side streets to avoid pursuit, Sylia was fighting that same problem. The little puffball she'd waved at McNichol had almost put her out on the spot, and it was all she could do now to keep her arms wrapped around the singer's waist to keep from falling off. Even now, she could feel herself slipping despite her best efforts, and the most telling sign of how badly off she was, was that the only thing she could think about the fact was, *At least it probably won't kill me when I fall.*

She didn't even realize that they'd reached the rendezvous point until, slipping sideways at last, she barely rolled once before she'd come to rest. The last thing that greeted Sylia's eyes before blackness took her was the tailgate of the Mobile HQ, and Mackie's feet as he hurried over to her.

The pain should have been unendurable, and for just an instant, when the first crushing, invisible hand had closed around her left foot, it had been. By the time it finished with that leg and moved on to the next, it had gone beyond the point where it was identifiable as pain. While her scream had only been cut off when the press had clamped down on her chest and ended the air supply, that was only the reaction to that first jolt, and the realization that she was surely about to die. When the final blow that would have ended it, crushing her head as her body had been, never came, though, that was the worst insult.

The overwhelming damage her body had taken had distilled itself into something like a white-hot light bulb filament, stretched tight and jangling. Linna seized that wire as her anchor line, clinging tenaciously to life as the only way left to fight back, ignoring the misty comfort of death behind her. That gentle softness spread to surround her, like a ring of blankets needing only to be touched to enfold her, and the dark-haired Saber wrapped herself tighter in her pain to keep it at bay. Collapsing again, it was before her at last, a shadowed lover whispering to her in some unknown language with beckoning arms outstretched. The pain had become a body glove of brilliant light and heat, and she gave Death the finger. "You may get me someday, Shinigami," she told it, "but not without a fight, and not today."

There was a brilliant flash of light as her pain exploded outward and away, driving out the shadows, making Linna squeeze her eyes shut against it. Opening them again, she found herself lying naked but uninjured in the new HQ garage, and the figure she'd thought to be death was Nene's mother, wobbling unsteadily on her feet. "That's good, then," the redhead quavered, then her eyes rolled back into her head and she collapsed across the Knight Saber's legs.

It was a somewhat subdued group that accreted in the main lounge area the next day, Hiryuko leaning against Tora on one couch with Nene hovering nearby in an overstuffed chair. Sylia sprawled across the second couch with a coolpack on her forehead, while Mackie was cross-legged on the floor reading. Cynthia, as usual, was absent, having been informally adopted by the Akimotos. Linna was the exception, practically bouncing as she fussed about, ferrying drinks or snacks or simply pacing in an excess of energy that even a lengthy session in the gym had been unable to wear off. "So you're saying that the Griffon was actually possessed by a demon, and not a buma at all?" she asked now.

"That's right," Tora replied. "We'd been picking up hints of its evil aura for months, but it hid itself too well to track down - probably by possessing that Gibson guy until the car was ready. By the time it showed itself last night, you'd made it your fight, and we couldn't interfere until you destroyed its physical body and it retreated to the Realm Between. Even weakened like that it was a tough opponent."

"But doesn't that mean Gibson got arrested for nothing?" Nene wondered. "It's not his fault if he was under someone else's control."

Lifting her head from her husband's chest, Hiryuko shook it, explaining, "No, that kind of demon can't possess living creatures for long periods of time, though it can hide its presence in their own. It may have planted a few suggestions, but it couldn't just use him like a puppet for more than a few minutes at a time."

Accepting a fresh lemonade from Linna, Nene hummed and looked unconvinced. "I still feel sorry for him, though. Demonic possession isn't something you can claim as a defense in court." She took a good swallow, then set the glass down on the stand beside the chair. "By the way, where's Priss?"

Looking up from his technical journal, Mackie answered, "Oh, I sweet-talked her into doing a little work for me." A roomful of incredulous glances greeted this statement, but he declined to explain further, returning to his article.

A growl of frustration filled the bay of Raven's Garage as Priss leapt up, then gave the badly beaten Highway Star a spiteful kick. The nose cowl slowly drooped and fell off with a clatter as she exclaimed, "I give up! There's no way I can fix these, let alone both at once!"

Slipping up his welding shield as he finished filling a crack on the rear armature of her equally wasted Typhoon, Dr. Raven fixed her with a stern look. "You're responsible for them," he reminded her.

Clasping her hands to bow (and not so coincidentally pushing her breasts together) she pleaded, "Mackie doesn't have to know; can't *you* fix them, *Doctor*?" *A little cheesecake and butter never hurts,* she appended mentally, as the irascible mechanic chuckled at her antics.

Perfectly aware that he was being manipulated, Raven shut down the welding machine and laid the handgrip aside. Something about what she'd just said was tickling his brain in another way. "Hmm... I suppose, but you're not getting out of it completely," he agreed a bit absently, rubbing his chin.

Dropping the pose, Priss smiled more naturally, and bent to move the big fairing off to one side as she replied, "Thanks... Doc."

The new nickname drew a snort of amusement, but there was something else on the older man's mind. "Both at once, y'say... That has possibilities, now that I think about it."

In one of the many cybernetics labs housed in the mammoth Genom Tower, Dr. Hayabusa Goldwing was doing his best to hide his nervousness, as The Chairman Himself and His personal assistant Kate Madigan looked over Goldwing's most recent project, going through a prepared demonstration in a bay below the gallery window that made up one wall of the lab. The lean, sleek mechanoid lowered the last pallet of cement blocks into place where it had been stacking them against one wall, then slid a sheet of plywood with a bullseye painted on it in front of the stack. It returned to the equipment rack in the center of the room and picked up the autorifle stowed there, then fired a series of quick, accurate bursts downrange.

Pausing, it turned to face the gallery, then opened the panels forming its upper body to let the operator whose arms and legs had been barely visible along the inner surfaces of its own deboard. Closing up again, it assumed a slightly more compact form, then fired off the rest of the rifle's magazine into the target, laid it back in the rack, and folded itself down into a compact sport motorcycle. The operator shortly joined the observing group from the dedicated lift between the lab and the test floor, pulling off his helmet to reveal a face that clearly had recent American Indian ancestry. "Not a hitch, Doctor," he reported.

"That's excellent news, Mr. Eagle," the youthful engineer replied. Turning to his executive guests, he continued, "As you can see sir, ma'am, we've taken the concept about as far as we can in a laboratory environment. The samples you provided played a major factor in getting it to this point so quickly, of course, but I'd like to recommend operational testing in the field if it's at all possible."

The Chairman hummed contemplatively, but seemed disinclined to comment further at the moment. Seeing this, Madigan asked, "I underrstand y' did not use buma technology forr the AI, Dr. Goldwing. Why is that?"

Hoping that the bead of sweat he could feel trickling down one temple wasn't visible, he took a breath and answered, "Yes, that's right. The volume available for control systems was too small for the support equipment involved with using a buma brain. This limits its overall flexibility, but the presence of a human operator more than offsets that factor. The attachment points on the operator body armor could easily be designed into a small buma, if you prefer."

"I see," Quincy intoned, speaking at last. "The presence of a human operator will also make it more palatable to civilians overly concerned with political considerations. The field trials will go forward... with the AD Police."

* * *

><p>Next time: Venus Portable Beam Cannon, Fire!<p>

* * *

><p>Car chase physics courtesy of Carmageddon and Carmageddon II: Carpocalypse Now<p>

Yes, Amy Anderson is from the US version of Sailor Moon, but she's not a senshi in this world, just a doctor... And really, is she any less a hero for saving lives without magical powers and an itty bitty skirt? Well, the outfit might have been a loss at one point, but she'd be fifty-something now, a bit past ideal miniskirt-wearing age.

A close look at the screen when Priss and Nene are looking things up in the ADP records reveals that J B Gibson is, in fact, James Bildi Gibson. I've chosen to take the middle name as being flactuled engrish for 'birdie' since I know of two other instances of it as an anime character name, and I wanted something that would be embarrassing enough to give our boy a reason to only use his initials. There's certainly enough precedent for such an action, as 'Sylia' is the official spelling of the Saber leader's name despite its clearly being shown as 'Celia' in the flashback where she views the data cartridge info. Now that I think of it, with my adding elements of Dragon Ball/DBZ to this, having her name as something close to a female form of 'Cell' is downright worrisome, ne? Especially given that she's some kind of evolving bio-android super soldier now.

This version of the Batmobile is mainly based on the 1990-something _Batman_ movie version, with some elements of the Eagle II from the Carmageddon Splat Pack and the Batman: The Animated Series Batmobile mixed in - it uses a conventional internal combustion engine instead of a turbine, has a louvered grille instead of the intake for the nonexistent turbine, and seats two. It's also ridiculously powerful for a car that should be in a museum even though it's remained essentially unchanged since Bruce Wayne died. On the other hand, it had been extensively upgraded already at that point, and had *begun* with a 950 HP Lycoming V18 under the hood, a powerplant designed for large single-engine aircraft. Now, with the supercharger going, it has around 1300-1400 HP at a guess, easily a match for the Griffon.

You have no idea how terribly I was tempted to put Sylia in a bat-costume, especially since the Batmobile, unlike Knight Sabers equipment, is not designed to accommodate an armored driver, nor one with six inch spike heels.

In the original continuity, Linna's motoslave was still a Hurricane, but both it and its replacement (the partially constructed one that stayed in the MHQ with Mackie and Cynthia in ch2, meant to have been Sylia's after her first got toasted in Aqua City with Nene's) have been destroyed at this point, so she got a new one. Not that it helped all that much, unfortunately... The 'slaves just don't keep up with the power curve fast enough.

Alas, poor Batmobile, we hardly knew ye. Sadly, the First Law of Cyberpunk Vehicles states that the cooler your wheels, the sooner they become a twisted pile of smoking wreckage. Any car as drop-dead gorgeous as that was doomed from the beginning.

It was suggested that Sylia use a really big energy blast instead of bang-you're-a-BB like the original prereader version, but I didn't want to have her actually do any major collateral damage, or Leon would be unlikely to just let her walk. At the same time, the levels of power involved in either approach felt too high to me at this point, where she only has amibient and biochemical energy to draw on. So, I came up with a compromise solution.

The BB effect would have been acheived by a tightly focused gravity wave, which would take scads of energy as it is the weaket of the forces - enhaced-form Mason is using a gravity wave for his force blasts, and that's about as much damage as one can do without lighting up a fusion plant in your chest or at least drawing on one in a backpack. The really big beam that looked like a fusion cannon would in fact have been a really dirty, two stage atomic particle/fusion weapon, suppressing the strong atomic force that holds the nuclei of atoms together so that matter in its path blasts itself apart with like-charge repulsion, becoming hydrogen that would pretty much immediately fuse into helium due to the heat liberated and the tight proximity of the hydrogens after the picosecond duration of the effect. This would also need a whole hell of a lot of energy input, and spew large quantities of ionizing radiation, probably enough to be a serious health risk to everyone around except Sylia herself at this point in time.

The hairline beam above operates on the weak atomic force, suppressing the tendency of opposite charges to attract. All the atoms in its course shed their electrons to become highly charged ions, ripping apart incidental airbourne molecules and recombining after the fact - again, liberating substantial amounts of heat, but nowhere near as much. On striking the target the effect flows around and through it, breaking up its molecular structure and letting the atoms recombine willy-nilly, with a small fraction of the heat scavenged back to give Sylia a bit of energy so she doesn't immediately collapse. Since most of Orenok's mass was aluminum-filled ceramel with some titanium frame members and traces of various other metals the result is very similar to metamorphic lunar regolith, crumbling easily to sandy particles and fine dust.

The fact that this becomes a second Sylia-as-Sailor Moon ref is merely a convenient coincidence. All the same, I love how it works out that way.

This was written possibly before Brbara Gordon became Oracle, and long before I heard of it. The official explanation is that ONLY _Batman: The Animated Series_ is canon for the setting, but if you want a direct IC explanation, for once it wasn't only the good guys who had bad luck, Joker got hit by a bus while crossing the street and was still in a full-body cast when he had the great iddea to go surprise the Commish at home.

Many thanks to my pre readers: Nathan Baxter, Hide Hasegawa, Leong Mun Yee, Andrew Wilson, Christopher Gilbert, and Drakensis, and to everyone on the BDPreread mailing list - you get your name listed if you actually make commentary, but just reading and finding nothing bad enough to complain about is still commentary of a sort.

Drakensis used to keep a remote archive of the story on his web site, but unfortunately it no longer exists. Since he's a damn good fic writer himself, I'll give a link to his profile instead, as a thank you for the effort when he did. It's at .net/u/347490/drakensis

Bubblegum Crisis belongs to Youmex and Animeigo, I make no claims otherwise. Please don't sue me, I have no money to speak of and fanfic does more to promote your products than anything else I know of - without it, I never would have known about anime at all, and I'd certainly never have bought the BGC tapes based on the sucky box copy.

Ranma 1/2 I'm not so sure of, except that the creator was Rumiko Takahashi, not me, and that I make no claims to own IT either. Likewise, Dragon Ball was created by Akira Toriyama, and is distributed in the US on video by FUNimation. I THINK that both Ranma and Dragon Ball comics are done by Viz in the US, but that may be incorrect.

I haven't a clue who owns Ah! Megami-sama! except that it's not me, and aside from the one cameo it's really not involved anyway.

The Bionic Six is similarly of unknown provenance, but I have a very vague and unreliable memory that it may have been animated by Suncoast video... In any case, it's STILL not my own creation.

_Dykstra's War_ is by Jeffery D Kooistra, published by Baen Books.

Batman and related characters, in all variations, are copyrights and trademarks of DC Comics; I'm not sure what studio(s) did Batman: The Animated Series but they undoubtedly have partial claim to it as well.

Sailor Moon was created by Naoko Takeuchi, and is undoubtedly also owned by some animation studio or another. I know that the RPG rights, in North America at least, belong to Guardians of Order.

"Highway Star" is a song by Deep Purple, from their album "Machinehead." It r0xx0rs.

EOF


	9. Chapter 5a

**I was all "FFN, Y U NO LUV ME?" about this, then I realized that I'm still around one review per thousand hits, and that's actually pretty good. Well, except for the part where only a few hundred people of the multitude who read on this site have bothered to look at it, but writing for a series that'll be thirty years old next year and had its peak in popularity sometime around the time that the internet was moving to this newfangled "html" stuff instead of FTP archives, I suppose I can't complain if people are reading it at all. And hey, that's 999 people who didn't hate it enough to flame! Anyway, here's the beginning of the really serious deviations from canon.  
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08_BD_WOASS_Ch_05a

2010-10-30 - fixed several minor errors  
>2007-06-07 - the typical just-posted-it-why-didn't-I-see-that-before errors fixed, including a couple of fairly major continuity glitches and numerous spelchekz<br>2007-05-31 - split the file, as it was becoming inconveniently large.  
>2007-05-30 - fixed an egregious continuity error, transcribed the part of the canon beachcat scene too important to skip.  
>2005-06-14 - NeneSylia breifing done  
>06-13-2005 - finished mental ward scene, driving, spelchekz<br>05-10-2005 - working on cops-not-in-morgue scene  
>01-16-2005 - now exceeds the length of Ch4, got Fargo's scene done. Yay!<br>01-12-2005 - still in progress 12/11/2004 - in progress

"My my, Mr. Mason, you certainly do get into the most *interesting* situations," Dr. Gero Yoshida cackled. The executive's carbonized corpse had been delivered to him within hours of its clandestine recovery at the foot of Genom Tower for dissection and a final report on the project, since the only other remaining subjects appeared to have become collateral damage in a buma attack. Even he had been amazed to discover that there was still brain activity in it, despite massive damage to the torso and the fact that destruction of surface tissues was nearly total, leaving only traceries and empty sheathes where the augmentation had run through it. Still, if the company was going to cut him off and hang him out to dry in the Production department, the least he could do was to double cross them in return. Brian Mason might have died, and the report he turned in would reflect that, but the project, his life's work, would NOT. Turning away from the vaguely humanoid charcoal briquette floating in a support tank, he studied the readings displayed on his computer screen, then continued typing in observations.

]The additional system support of a nutrient bath appears to ]have stabilized subject ZODIAC-9, and the new nanites have ]integrated perfectly with his existing set. Physical repairs ]have already begun, and scan results show that the subject's ]skeleton is again being upgraded with sturdier joints and ]muscle attachment points, as well as what appear to be nodes ]for a distributed Dykstra field system. Combined with the ]results from ZODIAC-19 in Aqua City and vivisection data from ]17 and 18, it can be concluded that the quick-conversion ]process is indeed successful; all that remains is to create ]the perfect combination of offense and defense. Further data ]samples will be required on the mercenaries who opposed #9.

Saving and closing the file for the moment, he created a new copy of the experiment template and began filling in preliminary information.

]SUBJECT ZODIAC-20 ]NAME: YOSHIDA, Gero

Bewilderbeast Studios Present

BUBBLEGUM DISASTER

Season One

WISHES ON A SHOOTING STAR

A work of BGC fan fiction by ClassicDrogn

Chapter Five

Continuity note: The Police Motorcycle Battloid introduced in this chapter is not, repeat *not*, I say again *NOT* a MOSPEADA cycle! Nor for that matter is it a Cyclone from Robotech: New Generation, which was made from Genesis Climber MOSPEADA's raped corpse. What it is, is a motoslave that links to unpowered armor. For the full rant on why this is a significant difference and why I hate the MOSPEADA ride armor, see the end notes.

Thanks to her position as a dispatcher for the security forces of Genaros, Mina actually held a higher clearance level than most of the human staff of the station, with Group 7 access. That had sufficed to let her 'lose' a trio of submachine guns in the paperwork, but arranging for a float-car to get their group to the space dock - most of whom would have set off alarms if they got within ten decks of it - had required Meg to get into the computer and forge her Group 6 access. She'd falsified a down-check for two of the five seat Reindeer squad cars, and a bit more hacking on Meg's part had insured Dorothy would be in the vehicle garage to 'repair' them. The false report hadn't raised any flags, and with the end of second shift ten minutes past the breakout was due any time now.

Checking out from her duty station with expertly feigned unconcern, the blonde buma's racing thoughts belied her calm exterior. Everything had gone without a hitch so far, but... better than any of the others, she understood how quickly the SSPD could get forces anywhere on the station, and three little SMGs would hardly faze a patrol car, let alone the *serious* security measures. Indecisive, she dithered a moment beside a water fountain, weighing the likelihood of blowing the whole deal against the probability that it would fail because they were underarmed. A faint beeping drifted from the dispatch center behind her, a low priority alarm prearranged to be a two-minute warning in case she hadn't gotten away yet, and that decided her. While it wouldn't cause any great concern - that alert had been chosen carefully to be minor enough that she could casually leave despite it - everyone would be watching it instead of their own boring stations, and that meant she had an opportunity.

Stepping into the cramped armory entryway, she gave the human guard at the terminal a cute little wave and a happy smile with a twinkle in her eye... a twinkle that grew into a hypnotic rainbow glow as one of the systems people tended to forget sexaroids were equipped with was activated. "There now. You just sit there nursing the boob tube and don't make marshmallow peeps," she ordered the blank-eyed officer. That taken care of, she opened the inner door with the Group 6 password Meg had provided, and darted inside. Not bothering with the racks of sidearms and SMGs, she headed directly for the heavy weapons in the back of the armored compartment, hefting a large, heavy aluminum case in each hand before turning to go.

Hurrying back out through the checkpoint, the light caught briefly on the logo embossed in the side of one case - a crescent moon cupping the words, Versatile Engineering Neotechnology, U.S.

With the resemblance of the weapons' cases to the ones used for ordinary Space Development Products Corporation maintenance kits, Mina'd had no trouble walking through the nearly deserted garage to the bay where Dot was waiting with the float-cars, but the time her little side expedition had eaten made it a nerve-wracking trip. The plan called for each of them to fly one of the cars out in the general scramble when the rest of the alarms went off, but if she was too late for them to leave in the group someone might remember that those cars were supposed to be unfit for service...

Fortunately, she made it just in time, passing the second case up to the redhead just as the scramble klaxons started to howl. The faintest hint of a frown rode Dot's deathly pale features, something Mina knew would translate to a screaming fit for most other people. There was no time for apologies, however, and the blonde used the toolbox sitting beside the other car - left there for the purpose, she was sure, since it was already running with the normal boarding steps retracted, and that kind of calculated efficiency was Dot's trademark - to hop into the pilot's seat, tossing the aluminum case onto the copilot's side for the moment. Even before the canopy had fully sealed, she'd begun pulling out into the stream of patrol and squad cars flowing out of the garage, Dot following tight behind.

Despite Mina's unvoiced worries, the two float-cars had made it to the small loading area off of float-car shaft four that served the Lower Ring gymnasium without any further difficulties. While Dot stayed with the floaters she hopped out and made the short trip to collect the group gathered in the gym - everyone else but Nam, who'd been inserted as part of the shuttle maintenance team to do the usual checks and service on its life support systems. She didn't notice Dr. Barnaby, out trying to walk off a bout of insomnia, when he ducked quickly back around a corner further down the corridor connecting the two rooms.

Eyes narrowed, he leaned around the corner just far enough to see the gymnasium door, and an angry frown settled on his face as he saw the group of buma emerge from it moments later. He waited for them to pass out of sight back the way the blonde had entered from, then stepped purposefully toward an intercom panel set into the corridor wall.

Meg was the first to react when the alarms went off, her red mane snapping like flames as she jerked up short and spun to gape at the announcement system mounted high on the wall of the loading dock. "No!" she gasped, slapping a fist into her left palm. "Everyone was supposed to be at the far end..." She shook off the shock, then turned back to get the others moving again, suddenly looking a great deal like a poised lioness. Mina was already running for her floatcar, she saw, with Sylvie and Anri starting to follow, but Lou and Hyatt were still frozen. "Hurry, everyone," she urged them, "before someone gets here!"

"Too late for that, bitches," a male voice snarled from the door to the corridor. "I -"

Meg seemed to blur and vanish, a streak of color and rush of wind connecting the place she'd stood with where she reappeared in front of Dr. Barnaby, one arm extended with the palm out flat where she'd slammed into his chest with a sharp crunch. Cut off midsentence, the human was tossed through the air like a discarded doll, only to slam into the bulkhead beyond with a wet crack. "...already called... Security..." he gasped, before hacking up a mouthful of bloody pink froth from a punctured lung.

Before he could slide to the floor, a staccato burst of machinegun fire walked across his chest and up to pound his head to ruin, Meg again blurring away as the unaccustomed kick of the SMG threw Hyatt's aim off. The bullets tracked across the wall until the magazine ran dry, the weapon shaking in her hands as cordite smoke trailed from the now open bolt. Thin scars showed bright white on her cheeks, throat, and down each arm as she flushed with anger. "BASTARD!" she cried. "You heartless bastard, just had to get in one more kick..."

Taking the gun from her now limp fingers, Meg chivvied the now weeping Hyatt toward the waiting cars, Lou snapping out of her daze and following, her own gun now unslung and at the ready, as the rapidly approaching wail of Station Security Police float car sirens echoed in from the transit shaft.

Reaching the vehicles, she left Lou and Anri to get Hyatt aboard Dorothy's while she leaned into the other, to see what Mina was fiddling with in the back seat that was making such an ominous whine. Before she could say a word, however, there was a flash of red light and an earth-shattering kaboom as as the second car exploded, cored like an apple by the heavy laser mount of a patrol floater that had just flared to a halt outside the loading dock. Staggered and deafened, she saw Sylvie's lips move as she called out something, running to where her partner Anri and the other two sexaroids had been tossed by the shockwave.

Still stunned herself, Meg could only stare blankly at the dull brown patrol car, now realigning for a shot at the second stolen floater. Before it could do so a brilliant pink and orange energy beam reached out and carved a burning crescent across its prow, slicing the lightly armored craft in half before it too exploded. Her hearing had recovered enough to catch Mina's shout, "Go Meg! I'll hold them off!" as she jumped down from the nose of the car, a bulky backpack with a prominent VENUS logo on her back and a fat cable leading to the particle thrower in her hands.

Shaking off her stupor, Meg slung the gun she'd taken from Hyatt on her own back and hurried to help Sylvie with the others, no longer moving with enhanced speed to conserve her systems for the next crisis. One look was all it took to tell Hyatt was beyond their help, crushed between a chunk of wreckage and the wall. Sylvie had obviously come to the same conclusion, pulling Anri away while the green-haired buma clutched at a shrapnel wound in her side. Meg had to do the same for Lou, hauling her along and shoving her into the copilot seat while Sylvie and Anri settled in the back, then lifting the floatcar off its skids and pulling out even as the sounds of more energy blasts and explosions drifted in from the transit shaft. "I'm sorry, Mina, Hyatt, Dot," she whispered, as the car pulled into the shaft and accelerated away.

Her mind shying away from the long-term implication of what she was doing, Mina dashed for the main entryway where the loading dock opened onto shaft four, picking her way quickly through the flaming rubble of the car she'd just destroyed. The VENUS proton accelerator pack bumped and shifted on her back, as she'd not had time to adjust the straps correctly, and the whine of its operation resonated with the ringing in her ears from the explosions. Skidding out onto the metal floor of the float car tube, she could see the lights of another patrol car approaching from the Upper Ring junction. Intense red blasts flew past as she hurried to the scant cover provided by the protruding edge of a blast door, peeking out to catch a glimpse of the oncoming car, now barely in range of her weapon.

She rolled sideways into the shaft just in time to see a burst of energy splash against her former position, then brought the thrower wand up like the nozzle of a firehose and let fly. The writhing rope of ionized particles reached out again, drawing a burning scar across the nose of the float car before flashing across the cockpit, vitrifying the glass and frying the pilot instantly. Uncontrolled, it veered off and crashed into the wall of the shaft, and yellow hull damage lights began to flash in that segment of wall, warning that the pressure hull had felt the hit. Behind her, she could hear the stolen Reindeer's turbine rev up, but more patrol cars were on their way already, and she didn't think she could stop more than one at a time. Grimly, she set the thrower power selector to 'Overcharge' and shrugged out of the backpack, laying it against the cratered wall... it would go critical any second, just as the nearest patrol floaters came even with it, by her estimate. Turning away again, she dashed back for the loading dock, hoping to make it to the far side of the blast door before the explosion.

She didn't, and as the whirlwind of escaping air pulled her out into the endless night, her last thought before shutdown was that at least it had thrown her toward the planet, instead of away, so perhaps a few ashes would make it through reentry and to the surface.

The stolen Reindeer floatcar zipped down Shaft 7, overhead lights flickering strobelike with the speed they passed, making stress-induced beads of sweat on Meg's face twinkle like the distant stars. Even so, the redhead's hands moved surely and steadily over the controls, fully concentrating on threading the car down the tunnel at speeds far greater than the station designers had intended... save for one small bit, that kept replaying the image of Mina running toward her in the rear view camera, then being swallowed by the blast as the power pack of her VENUS Beam Cannon had overloaded, and the blast door sealing as the hull blew open and vented the compartment to space. The world seemed to move in great swoops and pauses as the stress trigger she'd set up for the 35A patch kept switching her into that state of fast-time, and she kept shutting it down to conserve her strength. She gave in and let it run as a pair of laser blasts suddenly swished past the car, one of them striking a junction box far ahead and plunging the corridor into darkness. As long as she didn't move that much, it shouldn't make a big difference anyway... and now the reaction time could be critical.

She could hear Lou seemingly suspended in mid-curse as she tried to set up the remaining VENUS cannon with the lights suddenly gone, the heavy backpack braced between her knees while its former case filled half the footwell of the rear seat, serving as a makeshift gurney for Anri's lower body, her back braced against Sylvie.

More blasts drifted toward them in the rearview and Meg maneuvered to slide around them again and again, always careful to keep the nose pointed toward the distant dot of light where the shaft lights were still functional. They floated forward timelessly, until finally the lights were upon them again. The junction with the main linear maglev highway would be coming up soon, she knew, and their lighter Reindeer would gain a bit of a speed edge over the armored Wildebeest patrol cars since all of its thrust could be put to propulsion while the heavier cars would still need a fraction for lift. The only problem was that there were a lot more routes for additional police vehicles to get on the Linear and box them in, and if the Bridge got enough control of the computers back they could seal it with emergency doors.

Endless seconds later, they crossed into the orangeish lighting of the linear highway. Vectoring nozzles extended from the lift jets at the front corners of the floatcar, and she could hear Anri's stifled grunt as the extra acceleration pressed everyone into the seats for a moment.

"Hang on, Anri," Sylvie comforted, her honey-gold eyes liquid with concern. "Just a little bit longer, and we'll be free!"

Clutched to her partner's chest, the deep green-haired buma gasped, "I'm sorry... now of all times..."

*Always worried about pulling her own weight,* Meg thought. Sneaking a glance over her shoulder at the shuttle pilots, she added aloud, "Once we get through here, we'll be at the spaceport. You suppose Nam's taken care of her part?"

"If it's all gone according to plan, she has," Sylvie answered. "We can't turn back now, no matter what happens." Her eyes seemed to flash, and her voice rang like a drawn sword as the dark haired sexaroid continued, "If we don't get to the planet, we won't have any future."

Finally finished with the VENUS, Lou cradled it in her lap, clutching it like some strange kind of teddy bear as she concurred, "Yes! I can't stand this place any longer! Faster Meg, faster!"

Suddenly, they rounded one of the few curves in the highway, and a patrol car was right in front of them, heading the same direction but slowly. The pilot punched the throttle before they could crash, but the stolen floater was still gaining with frightening speed. Locking her attention back on the controls, Meg made a desperate gamble and fed in differential thrust, tilting the Reindeer up on its side as it scraped past the patrol car in the relatively narrow tunnel. The extra pressure proved just slightly too much, and the patrol floater's front vectoring nozzle touched down to the road surface. In less than a blink, the dragging nozzle had flipped the car into a tumble, then the whole thing exploded as thruster fire reflected back from the sturdy maglev plates and melted the engines. Only the heightened reflexes of her hacked motion control code let Meg ride the shockwave without crashing her own car - that, and more luck than she wanted to think about.

The other two cars burst through the pall of smoke, continuing their pursuit and still firing the occasional blast despite falling ever further behind. Ahead, red warning lights began to flash in time with emergency klaxons, and several blast doors began to close off the tube.

One - two - three - four they shot through like a kayak through rapids, five with a scraping sound and a lurch to the right. Meg breathed a sigh of relief as they made it into the last stretch before the spacedock, even as a brilliant explosion puffed between the last set of doors. The gap had narrowed to only two feet and one of the chasers apparently hadn't managed to stop in time, after making it through the other sets.

As the end of the Linear came in sight Lou cheered, "It's the exit! We made it!" She was distracted a moment later as the forward view screen set in the dash blipped and showed a rotating wireframe image of a huge, heavily armored humanoid, text scrolling to one side to warn that it had detected and identified obstacles in the passage ahead. "Dobermans?" the blonde cried, again clutching the particle cannon. "It's no use! We can't get away now."

Sylvie seemed to have other ideas, laying Anri gently aside so she could lean forward and suggest, "Meg! Set the car on full auto-cruise! We'll have to jump for it and use the car as a distraction!" Turning back to her partner, the pilot's voice softened, asking, "Anri, you can do that, right?"

Weak but determined, the green-haired girl mumbled an affirmative, and the plan was put in action. The canopy was opened, sliding forward to leave the sides and top of the cabin clear. Its position and the fairly dark red tint of the thick plastic would make it hard to see what was happening behind it from the Dobermans' point of view, directly ahead.

Snarling, the hulking white security buma released safety latches, transformed their lower arms to expose machinegun barrels, and opened fire, the brilliant glowing steaks of tracer rounds flashing past the onrushing float-car. Two or three actually punched holes in the windshield, but missed the crouched fugitives within. They jumped before the Reindeer left the maglev tunnel, Lou carrying the VENUS while Meg and Sylvie each took one of Anri's shoulders. Even at that they were almost too late - the shockwave as a bullet finally struck the car's fuel tank and detonated it knocked them out of the air like a burning hot fly swatter, though thankfully all the wreckage and splashing fuel continued on, piling into the Dobies. Quickly, they scrambled to their feet and away through a side passage.

By the door to the shuttle bay, Nam waited just out of sight of anyone approaching from outside. She'd already gotten what equipment they could scrounge and the extra life support supplies loaded after the rest of the service crew left, having faked a hard-to-trace fault in the backup rebreather plant to hold up her part of the job. Just this once, she was glad none of the few human crewmembers who treated buma decently had been in the same crew, as it would have been awkward if some helpful soul had stayed to assist. As it was, everything had gone without a hitch, and now all she had to do was wait, impatient and twitchy, for everyone else to arrive. "What could be keeping Sylvie and the others? They're late!" she worried to herself, visions of the multitude of disasters that could have befallen them circling her mind. The third sub machine gun Mina had managed to get for them was held awkwardly somewhere near a ready position, but the little sonic blasters riding her soulders were active, and their far less lethal nature would make them her weapon of choice anyway.

Hearing running feet coming toward her, she tensed and the SMG came up as she got ready to confront whoever was approaching. The little blasters weren't all that noticeable, let alone intimidating...

The purple eyed sexaroid sighed in relief as she heard Sylvie's voice call for her, and stepped out to see the pilot with her partner hanging off of her, Meg and Lou bringing up the rear. "I thought you were done for!" she scolded. "But, where are...?"

The leader of their little group could only shake her head, the loss of the others still too fresh. Nodding toward the shuttle, Meg asked, "Is she ready?"

"Everything's A-OK," Nam replied, waving them forward. She followed Sylvie and Anri up the boarding ramp, but stopped halfway up, realizing Meg and Lou weren't following yet. She turned, finding that they'd taken rear guard positions by an empty cargo crate and the still parked service truck. "Hurry everyone! The patrols are making their rounds now!" she urged.

Trying to pick up the pace, Anri overstressed her wounded side and faltered at the head of the stairs, gasping and blinking back tears. Sylvie stopped with her, the smaller buma hanging off her desperately as she tried to recover. "It's OK Anri," she encouraged, "it's all right now. Hang on."

As if to disprove her, a loud metallic thump echoed through the bay. Meg, who'd been looking at the right moment to see the now closed blast doors they'd entered through jump in their tracks, moaned, "It's the Doberman!" Another hit, and the doors started to bulge where they joined. "Get on board, quickly!" the fire-haired sexaroid ordered.

"Meg! Lou! what about you?" Nam protested. Before either could answer, the Doberman succeeded in tearing through the heavily armored doors, greeted by a strangled noise of dismay as it stepped heavily over the wreckage.

"Hurry!" urged Meg, popping out from behind her crate with a gun in each hand. Amplified strength from the 35A software let her hold them steady, pouring a stream of lead at the Dobie's head in an attempt to at least distract it. She held little hope of actually doing damage, as even the collision and explosion of their floatcar had only crisped the plating of its left arm.

Irritably, it swatted at the incoming rounds, deflecting a handful into the air while the rest ricocheted harmlessly from its heavy armor. High above, one of the strays punctured an umbilical carrying hydrazine for the reaction thrusters, and the impact combined with the hot copper case of the round set off a small explosion.

Seeing the debris falling straight for them, Nam activated her own 35A patch, suddenly blurring out and shoving Sylvie and Anri forward into the shuttle, taking shelter with them in the airlock.

Gasping for breath after having the wind knocked out of her, Sylvie choked out, "Nam... thanks. That was close."

Lou had also stepped out to fire, playing the proton beam across the Doberman's chest like a fireman trying to quell rioters, but where the squad cars had quickly succumbed to its searing force the space combat buma took only minor damage. It dodged to the side and roared with anger at the little insects that dared to harm it.

Hearing Sylvie still behind her, Lou turned to yell over her shoulder, "What are you standing there for? Mo-" The sun-hot green annihilation of the Doberman's mouth laser cut her off, wiping the blonde from existence even as it breached the containment field of the accelerator on her back, causing a secondary explosion that tossed the flaming wreckage of the service truck into a far corner.

"...uU!" Meg's grieving cry seemed to warble like a police siren as she again blurred into motion, solid streaks of jumpsuit beige and fiery red ringing the Doberman as she built up speed, then leapt to plant both heels in its grinning skull of a face. The impact staggered even that mighty war machine, but it caught her around the chest as she rebounded, and one short, sickly crunch later the leader of the escapees was no more.

In the shuttle, Nam let out one terrible sob, as if she'd felt her own heart crushed along with Meg, and jabbed a control beside the still open airlock.

"Nam, what are you DOING?" demanded Sylvie. "We can't just..."

"We have to go," the purple haired sexaroid choked. "We have to find freedom... enough freedom for all of them." She touched another key and the elevator started to move, even as the outer door slid shut. "Meg, Lou, Mina, Hyatt, Dot... everyone."

They arrived at the flight deck, and all three quickly strapped in. Sylvie had to fight herself to pull the launch lever, even though she knew it was far too late to do anything for the others by going back, but after only a second's pause she did it. A glance at the aft monitor to confirm all engines firing normally - not that there was anything she could do about it if they weren't, or that the computer wouldn't notice long before she could anyway, but it was part of her checklist - revealed that the Doberman had tried to jump onto the side of the shuttle, but had been just a whisker too slow. She felt a tiny measure of satisfaction watching the murderous buma warp and melt in the inferno of the shuttle's main engine cluster, finally exploding as its fusion core was breached.

Somehow, even though it meant they'd escaped, she couldn't cheer. Nam's strangled, choking sobs behind her on one side, Anri's comatose silence on the other, and most of all the half dozen empty seats weighed far too heavily for that. At least with Nam having made it, she could patch up Anri before they made landfall, even if it took an extra orbit to do it - anything more than sticking a bandage over the wound was beyond Sylvie's knowledge. That might even buy them more time before ground forces could come when they did land, if she made some orbit changes as feints in between. With the booster stage attached, she'd have had to dump a lot of fuel just to get into re-entry trim anyway.

Cynthia woke to the gentle poking of Yuki, the ten inch tall, platinum blonde pixie crouching beside the girl's pillow. On the bedside stand just beyond, dark-haired Hotaru looked on, agitatedly collapsing and extending her iridescent wings and fidgeting with a pencil. Seeing her mistress's eyes flutter open and focus, Yuki's jingle-bell voice chimed softly to tell Cynthia why they'd awakened her.

Rising from her futon, the young girl wrapped the covers around herself for warmth as she opened the window of the bedroom the Akimotos had given her and leaned out over the rail bounding the tiny balcony. The two fairy-buma hovering near her head, she craned her neck to look south past the eaves, to where a fiery streak marred the early morning gloom.

"A shooting star? How pretty..." Cynthia remembered Major Rose's large, warm hands on her shoulders, steadying her as she leaned over the rail on the roof of the SDPC Building to watch the Leonid meteor shower one cool summer night, her housecoat fluttering in the breeze. A faint smile touched her face at the memory, a stolen moment away from everyone else, until the silvery tones of Yuki and Hotaru's voices drew her back to the present. Yuki twittered again, suggesting looking closer with her other vision, the way they'd been practicing.

"Un," the little girl agreed, closing her eyes while concentrating on keeping a clear image of the shooting star, still creeping along the horizon. The image in her mind zoomed in, arc welder speck swelling to a blazing fireball, and then ... "A spaceship? But the place they land is by the bay, that's not the right way for one to come down," the former buma commented. She shifted the viewpoint again, moving through the hull of the shuttle to find the cockpit. There a dark-haired woman worked the controls with barely restrained desperation, the copilot slumped against the seat and a third woman gritting her teeth and clutching the armrests of her seat with knuckles white from fear. An angry red indicator glared from the console, warning that the computerized landing system was shut down, and the craft was completely off the Megatokyo spaceport approach path.

Hotaru's voice was ever so slightly deeper than Yuki's, but still sweeter than silver bells as she too sang to Cynthia, calling on other lessons that they'd practiced to pull back the view again and determine where the shuttle was headed, the most probable course stretching before it like the headlamps of a car.

"Oh no, that's right here!" Cynthia cried. "It might hurt the horses if it lands in the field like that. We have to do something!" Two fairy bells chimed in agreement, as they suggested some things she could do about it.

Sylia's awakening was considerably less pleasant; with the volume she had to set the alarms at for them to actually rouse her from a deep sleep her head was left ringing despite how quickly she rolled out from the covers and slapped the 'acknowledge' button on her bedside console. Stifling a yawn, she quickly scanned through the on-site sensor logs, then turned to the remote feeds - the passive equipment installed around the hydroponic farm base was the best, but even that couldn't give meaningful coverage beyond a mile or two away. A bit of creative hacking to divert a copy of the datastream from the airport and spaceport traffic control systems was one of the ways she made up for that lack, the feeds constantly monitored by expert system AIs of her own design.

Those systems had picked up the wayward Orca IV even before Hotaru and Yuki - the mere fact that its IFF transponder had gone to emergency mode would have rated flagging it for attention when the logs were checked, but when its projected flight path took it directly over the base they signaled for immediate action. As Sylia switched to the relevant feed and interpreted it herself, her breath caught in her throat - that shuttle wasn't just heading overhead, it was going to come down RIGHT HERE, probably in the horse field, but if it shortened its path the slightest bit, or just came in a little lower than expected, it would pile straight into the hill facility itself.

Even if the impact didn't break it open physically there was still no way crash investigators could miss the base under the farm - nothing could be THAT well hidden. Worse still, there was precious little she could do about it, even if she'd had days of warning, let alone minutes - sure, she had weapons capable of shooting it down before it reached them, but even without the moral question of such an action it was sure to be seen, and that would be worse than simply having it crash and expose them. Still, there was ONE possibility left, with the abilities she'd gained in her transformation.

Decision made, Sylia grabbed the robe from her dresser, belting it securely over her nightie as she hurried to her lab. There'd be no time to change into something more suitable, she'd just have to trust in her own durability.

Moments later, she'd reached her workshop, her most recent project still lying where she'd left it before finally going off to bed. She'd meant to have the thing well away from the base - and anything else, for that matter - before lighting it off, but now there just wouldn't be time...

She had J.B. Gibson to thank for it, really, or the demon that had possessed his car. She'd drawn energy right out of the streetlight power lines for the attack that had finished it off, and after consciously figuring out the field patterns that had let her do so, she was quite sure she could pull the heat out of a fusion core and convert it to useable power.

The only problem was, she'd never built one before - Knight Sabers equipment so far had been efficient enough to run off batteries or, for the motoslaves, small gas turbines. This unit was a replica of the resin-based design that had powered the Superbuma, a lucky crack Nene had managed to pull off of a computer core recovered from the wreckage of that fiasco in the fifteen minute interval it was in ADP custody before being confiscated by government personnel - and undoubtedly delivered right back to Genom.

*I'm just stalling,* she thought irritatedly. Clearing her mind, the silvery haired Knight Saber took a deep breath, hoping that there was still someone to listen as she entered the activation code and murmured Shepard's Prayer.

Reaching to re-engage the (reprogrammed) autopilot, Sylvie hesitated, turning to look over her shoulder to where Nam was unstrapping Anri's seat harness. "Are you sure about this, Nam? I know you never got much practice with those sonic blasters..."

"No, this is the only way. Without-" The purple haired buma had to choke back a sob before continuing; they had no time for tears now. "Without the others, we'd never be able to escape the spaceport. I can keep a barrier up for a few seconds at least, and the DD will protect you and Anri. Are YOU sure you'll be able to pilot it with her in your lap?"

Activating the control with a sigh, Sylvie stood and replied, "I'll find a way. Like you said, it's our only hope, now... what the heck!" She'd stumbled, shocked, as the shuttle suddenly stopped descending, maintaining a level course instead of the gently inclined one she'd set. "Oh hell! We'd better hurry, something's wrong and there's no time to figure out what!"

Each of them took one of the unconscious Anri's arms over their shoulders, then hustled aft to the bay where the DD Battlemover crouched; already fueled, armed, and supplied, and ready to be delivered for 'testing' to whichever arms smuggler had managed to land the deal. It was about to be tested a bit sooner than expected, however, as Sylvie scrambled into the cockpit while Nam supported Anri, then passed her up to the pilot.

"Bio-links on!" the lavender headed sexaroid commanded, slapping the ring on her right hand into the control cuff on the opposite wrist even as the crimson mecha's hatch hissed closed beside her on its hydraulic rams. A greenish energy flare flickered around her for a moment as her powerplant went to full output and synchronized with the prototype sonic blasters still riding on her shoulders, and then there was nothing but the faint, musical tone of the sonic bubble forming around her, a subharmonic of the inaudible wavelengths used for the effect. The air shimmered slightly where the perfectly balanced waveforms met around her, and Nam crouched to let the four foot diameter sphere completely surround her as it grew.

Moving carefully to avoid losing the frictionless barrier and her friend inside it, Sylvie wrapped the DD's arms around the energy-ball, then kicked her way through the side of the shuttle and bailed out. The battlemover's thrusters ignited to carry them away barely above the treetops, the cyclone-force slipstream shredding the side of the shuttle behind them and tumbling the renegades dangerously until she could compensate. Leveling out, she turned to look back one last time at the Orca IV - she was a bit sorry to see it go this way, after serving her so well for the years she'd been assigned to it - then paused, still hovering just above tree height, as she saw something glowing a brilliant blue drop away from under the nose and ... fly towards her?

No one else was awakened by the faint rumble that shook the hidden base moments later - after all, minor quakes hit Japan on a daily basis. They'd have to wait until morning to find out just what had happened in the wee hours of the night.

Captain Akemichi was on the husky side for a police officer even in the N-Police instead of the SWAT-like ADP, but he always managed to pass his certifications, and as a crime scene investigator rather than a beat cop it made little practical difference. He was waiting now for a couple of AD Police hotshots while his team carefully picked over the wreckage of a crashed shuttle, the somewhat narrow valley making their heavy aerodyne's lift fan echo oddly as it flew in from Megatokyo to the east.

*How troublesome...* He could almost hear his old partner Shika's signature line as the aerodyne circled lower, starting to kick up a small dust cloud from the debris.

Soon enough they were on the ground, the sunglasses-clad officer who was first out the hatch letting his Inspector's badge do the talking as he grumpily peered around the scene, while the lavender-suited redhead who followed made introductions after sharing a sardonic look. "I'm Inspector Wong, and this is my partner, Leon McNichol," he greeted. "So what've you got for us, ...?"

"Choji Akemichi," he replied. "According to the wreckage we've seen so far, it looks like it probably belongs to the Space Development Products Corporation."

Daley snorted. "Don't they have any better way of throwing their trash away?" he quipped.

Leon led the way as they walked closer, wanting a better look at the remains. "What about the pilot?" he asked, finally coming to a halt and pulling off his sunglasses as parts tossed out on the ground become too thick to walk through without disturbing the scene.

"Whoever it was, he must have had eyes like a hawk," Akemichi replied. "Judging by the flight path, he saw the Ishioka greenhouse somehow despite coming in so fast and pulled up to miss it, then lost it when the extra strain made the shuttle start breaking up. That may have saved a dozen lives, but..." He paused to cast an eye over the twisted wreckage of the spacecraft, little more than a mass of alloy and melted plastic. "Under the circumstances, he's probably dead."

"Yeah," Leon agreed somewhat reluctantly, surveying the devastated shuttle and the long scar where it had plowed aside dirt and uprooted trees before coming to a halt. "There's no way anyone could have survived."

Just then, one of the junior investigators jogged up to report. "Captain! We've got the results of the inquiry on the serial number we found earlier - the database confirms that this is Orca IV, a shuttle belonging to SDPC. There's no word yet on who was aboard."

Choji grumbled unhappily, silently wishing he'd brought another bag of Cheezy Poofs to calm his nerves. The government-owned corporation was sure to have its own investigators here shortly, agents with far too much political clout to keep sidelined while his people did their job. *Probably here specifically to keep us from finding out certain things,* he growled mentally. "If we're dealing with SDPC, we might as well pack it in now," he commented sourly.

Daley nodded, ruefully agreeing, "So what we have is over our heads, in more ways than one."

"Take it with a grain of salt," Leon advised. "Down here it's our jurisdiction." Looking back down the valley, he continued, "Looks like they're on their way." The rhythmic beats of heavy helicopter rotors echoed in the distance, a trio of them appearing through the same pass the ADP aerodyne had used earlier.

Standing at the windows that made up one wall of a darkened office, a tall, well dressed man smirked disparagingly, idly playing with an antique metal coin while he listened to the office's owner chew out a subordinate over the Genaros affair. Though his angular face seemed young, his short-cropped, spiky hair was stark white, with only the faintest hint of color - a steely blue that only added to his chilling appearance. A scar on each cheek and one above his left eye formed something like an inverted, lower-case Y. The ridged flesh was slightly darker than his pallid skin, framing a pair of cybereyes much more obvious than current fashion with their dead-black sclera and segmented, golden irises. As the video call ended, he spoke without turning, eyes seemingly fixed on the flashing coin as it spun above his fingers. "It seems, at least for now, that Kaufman is still following your orders, Flint," he remarked.

"Our most immediate concern right now is the whereabouts of the DD, which was supposed to be aboard that shuttle," the portly, greying executive noted. "If ADPolice or the Tower find out about it, we'll have no choice but to temporarily cut the strings between us and our SDPC puppet, Magnus."

Turning at last, the white-haired man's mouth twisted into a scowl as he chided, "Your security is not my problem, Flint, particularly if you persist in pretending to be my superior. Rather than sever ties, YOU, and the chair you're sitting in, might simply... vanish." Unnerving eyes narrowing as he made the threat, Magnus looked over the rim of the coin which had stopped, hovering in mid air with the head side toward Flint. On his last word, it suddenly crumpled into a ball, as if crushed in some invisible, immensely strong hand.

Flint paled, but kept his voice steady as he apologized, "Sorry, Mr. Largo. Still, I know what those girls are after, and both ADPolice and the Tower *will* be investigating this. I trust you'll appreciate the risk I run shielding you."

A sarcastic snort was his only reply, as the crushed coin slowly settled on the center of his blotter. Face tight, Flint turned his chair to look out the windows himself, wondering just what manner of devil he'd chosen to ally with.

It was only with difficulty that Nene had controlled the giggle fit that threatened to overtake her as Leon dodged the Chief's coffee cup - apparently, he hadn't agreed with the official order for Daley to just take statements as a formality on his upcoming trip to the space station, and the Chief hadn't liked Leon's bullheadedness ... as usual.

She sighed as the commotion settled down again - also as usual, the paperwork on cases past and present was never ending, and despite filling in other roles - dispatcher, aide, or VIP escort - from time to time, her official position was little more than a records clerk with a badge. Therefore, the majority of the paperwork in the detectives' office was hers and Naoko's to sort, file, and/or scan into the database, and she was still playing catch-up slightly from the weeks missed after the destruction of Lady633, especially since her co-worker Naoko was on vacation herself this week.

Case in point: the Forensics Department's analysis of the remains left behind by the Griffon had been sitting in her inbox since the morning before last, and she was only now getting to it. She almost hated to take the time, but at the same time she was curious what they'd made of it, the physical remains of a supernaturally animated construct. She rather expected Sylia would want a copy once it had been converted to digital format, for that matter... maybe just a little peek?

The giggle-fit struck her with a vengeance as she flipped open the folder. Inside, instead of the usual general summary, the first page was a colored pencil sketch of the white Knight Saber, with the addition of Green's monoribbons and a miniskirt, posing in front of a crescent moon. Below it, a caption read, "MOON HEALING ESCALATION! You're dusted!" and she couldn't help it any more, she broke out in full blown laughter, imagining Sylia in place of the star of that old show, STILL in reruns to this very day.

Leon craned over from his desk, and grinned as he spotted the picture in front of her. "Finally got to that one, did you?" he asked, chuckling. "I thought you'd appreciate a laugh, with how swamped you've been lately. Fuko MacNamara drew it, she's the police artist on my squad. She usually sells them from what I understand, but you can have that one."

Somehow, it didn't seem quite so long to the end of Nene's shift after that.

At least money was something they hadn't had to worry about, thought Nam as she followed Sylvie down the highway on their new motorbikes. "Thank you, Meg," she whispered. Part of the redhead's extensive preparations for the breakout had been to divert a large amount of money to a groundside account - ironically enough, through a network used by Genom itself to fund its own black ops and remain untraceable even internally. It wouldn't last forever, but carefully managed it could last a few years with only three of them...

... somehow, she'd rather have needed to find paying work sooner. *It's not the time for regrets, it's time to make good memories for all of us,* she told herself, and returned to concentrating on where she was, what she was doing. Honestly, though she'd never been one to seek out excitement - excitement came to her all too often in the emergency ward - ever since that first blast of speed when she'd activated her advanced movement systems with Meg back on the station, Nam had found herself longing to go just a little faster, push things just a little farther. Jumping out of a crashing shuttle in the arms of a battlemover, with only an invisible barrier of sound waves between herself and being ripped apart by a supersonic slipstream had been terrifying, but also exhilarating.

Now, she was dressed in a yellow and blue jumpsuit and snuggled up to the tank of a hot, tuned and modified sport bike, only barely behind Sylvie as they tore down the Bayshore highway, straining to make up the distance while keeping what she'd come to think of as her 'software accelerator' from going online. That wasn't so much because it would be an unfair advantage - though with the way it made time seem to slow to a crawl it certainly would be - but because it would no longer be a thrill to ride a bike she could outpace on foot. Until they could deal with the 33S design's somewhat limited blood regeneration, though, using that speed under anything less than life-threatening danger was out of the question.

It was with a happy grin then that she took the inside line around the curve at the deepest section of the bay, gaining several handspans on Sylvie as the two of them eased past another cyclist in the outside lane, on a red, white, and blue bike. They'd spent most of the day looking at various rides before settling on their modified Genom GSX-R 2300s, but her best guess was that it was a completely custom design. Seeing the yellow and black suited biker twist the throttle to catch them up, she released a happy laugh and let the enhanced software take over for a moment, looking back over her shoulder and casually waving in an invitation to join the race. She shut it down again as she faced forward, the third woman rapidly catching up.

Not too much later, all three of them had pulled off at a beach on the north end of the bay to watch the sunset and eat odango from a nearby yatai. The custom bike's rider had introduced herself as Priss, a musician, and had recognized the tuning shop logo on their bikes on sight. She paid for her fresh-off-the-grill odango and turned back to the sexaroids, remarking, "Kaneda must have done a number on those old Gixers to get that kind of performance - I had one a few years back and it was fast, but nothing close to what we were pulling just now." She took a bite of one of the meatballs and yelped, washing it down with a quick swig of juice before blowing on the ones still on the spike.

While Nam suppressed a grin, Sylvie replied, "Do you know him, then? I got a good look at his collection of custom bike pictures, but I don't remember anything like yours."

Still waiting for her food to cool, the singer nodded, but explained, "This is a scratch built design from Raven's Garage - it's not too far from Kaneda's actually, but Doc doesn't keep a showroom and it's down in the canyons, so it's more of a word of mouth kind of place. Even some people who've been in the bike scene for years don't know about it."

"I see," said Nam, joining the conversation. "Since we're both new in town, it's no surprise we missed it, in that case. We needed some wheels right away, so if he only does special orders it wouldn't have helped anyway, but maybe when it's time to trade up?"

"Well, he doesn't handle a lot of clients, but I'll introduce you and see what he says, at least." Finally deciding her odango had cooled enough, Priss took another careful bite, then pulled the rest of the top meatball off the skewer, chewing it energetically before concluding, "It's definitely the place to go if you want to see the hottest bike in town, though." That it was still kinda on the trashed side, in no small part due to her, she kept to herself. *At least Mackie let up on making me fix it, finally. Must have realized it wasn't getting anywhere except when Doc helped, and with that new project taking his attention that's not so often as I hoped.*

Sylvie and Nam had already finished their meatballs, and with the sun now below the horizon were getting ready to head back to the apartment they'd rented. Seeing this, Priss called to them, "My band is playing all week at Hot Legs, on Hayate street. Come check us out some time if you like retrothrash, eh?"

Pausing with her helmet in her lap, Sylvie winked at the red-eyed singer, grinning as she confirmed, "Okay, it's a date!" - which came as something of a surprise to Nam. She'd gotten a good vibe from the woman, but had thought Sylvie quite attached to Anri. With a slight shrug, she fastened her own helmet and returned Priss's wave before starting up the bike's engine and rolling out.

Seeing them well gone, Priss shot her own bike a disgusted look and complained, "Geeze, custom built gas hog and it still barely beats a pair of Kaneda's cookie cutter, Genom kiss up hack jobs. I don't know who should be more pissed, me or Pops."

Linna could hear Sylia talking to one of her contacts in the other room as she changed - something about arms smugglers - but her mind was anywhere but on their 'knight work' at the moment. Everyone had been busy the past couple of days after realizing Cynthia disappeared the same night as the shuttle had crashed, in an unsuccessful repeat of the search they'd done when first hired to find her. The white saber had been as close to frantic as Linna could remember ever seeing her, out of worry for their secrecy and - she suspected - for the little girl, miraculously made flesh and blood a few months ago, who'd slowly been working her way into all of their hearts. Mr. and Mrs. Akimoto had been the hardest hit in that respect, the elderly couple who'd all but adopted the child joining in the legwork where they could.

Perhaps the most disturbing part of it was that Sylia *hadn't* run them all off to another location like she had when Priss's weird stalker-robot had infiltrated their original headquarters (though everyone had received two sets of alternate identities, complete with bank accounts and travel visas) suggesting that she didn't have another prepared fallback position this time. None of that had her full attention at the moment, of course, because with the search called off this evening she had far more important concerns on her mind: getting ready for tonight's date!

Usually she used her own apartment, of course, having moved back in as soon as things settled down after the Lady633 fiasco, but this afternoon had come to get a set of special-order clothes Sylia had whipped up for her. The reasons for *that* were what was foremost on her mind... Ever since she'd woken up from being crushed in her hardsuit fighting the possessed Griffon, her strength had been almost uncontrollable, and it had caused quite a few problems. She'd had to stop doing hands-on instruction in her karate classes at Phoebe's Gym after putting a student's shoulder out of joint accidentally, and any outfit not made of bulletproof nanoweave fabric tended to get torn to shreds if something so much as startled her. Hiryuko had guessed that there had been lasting physical damage as a result of all the years she'd spent with her ki turned against itself, even after Kami-sama had straightened it out - damage repaired along with everything else by the Kagami woman's Ritual of Ultimate Restoration.

As inconvenient and frustrating as that was, however, the fact that the furry brown tail she'd finally remembered having as a child had grown back was far more alarming... she wasn't sure why she hadn't gone to get it removed yet, herself. It made her balance strange unless she wrapped it around her waist, was fiendishly sensitive and uncomfortable in a hardsuit even if she did, and had to be hidden somehow when she was in public. She'd been wearing a lot of silk sashes these days, and really had no idea what she was going to do if her date tonight turned out especially well. Yasuo was a nice guy and all, but...

Maybe she could pass it off as an exotic piece of cybernetics? An impulsive teenage addition when they were fashionable, kept as a reminder to avoid future foolishness?

She cleared her mind with an unhappy sound, concentrating on getting the green tabard to hang artistically over her black bodysuit and the knot on her red sash to be loose enough for comfort but tight enough to keep her errant new member well hidden. She'd traded her usual yellow bandanna for matching red, as well. "I do wonder who comes up with these fashions," she murmured to herself. "Between this and the white high-heel boots I look like some bizarre manga character."

Oh well, at least having the sash around her waist made the otherwise loose garment a bit more form-fitting. Then again, she was his date to a media industry party, sure to be filled with the latest music idols and TV stars. Did she *really* want to invite comparisons? At least the tabard's flared shoulders made her waist and hips look that much thinner, and the one wholly positive aspect of her physical changes lately was that her boobs hadn't lost any size, even while the rest of her body fat seemed to melt away. If anything, the underlying pectoral muscles had grown, firming them up more and adding a full cup size. Feeling much more confident in herself, she grinned at the hot chick in the mirror, boasting, "Let those stick figure songbirds try starting anything. He's there with *me*, and any kitten who tries to use her claws is gonna find herself facing a mountain lion!" Her frame of mind much improved, Linna brushed a hand through her black hair - fortunately, spiky was in at the moment, so she didn't have to try to plaster it down - and headed out, absently noting that Sylia had finished her call and vanished again as she passed through. She was due to meet her beau at a cafe in fifteen minutes or so, but it wouldn't hurt him to wait a little, so the long drive back into Megatokyo wouldn't be a problem.

It was a rainy night a few days later, and while some parts of the city were as active as ever the Kawasaki industrial district was quiet, abandoned to the terminally over-dedicated and a few night watchmen, be they human or buma. At a small Genom service center placed there to capitalize on the buma workforce by providing technicians for on-site repairs, a guard of the human variety was cursing whatever idiot had scheduled both of the usual buma watchmen for a maintenance cycle this evening, the almost-burned-out parking lot floodlamp that gave only sporadic bursts of light, the low quality of coffee stocked in the break room vending machine, and pretty much everything else in the immediate vicinity right on down to the leak in his left shoe.

"At least the damn things will be up in an hour or so and I can finally go home," he grumbled, crumpling his latest coffee can. As he came out the door for another hurried circuit around the outside of the building, a flash of movement caught his eye when the floodlight flickered on for a moment. Pointing his flashlight that way revealed something big and red with a girl standing in front of it, taking off a clear visor of some kind. Before he could get more than a glimpse of her, she blurred and vanished, suddenly reappearing a few feet in front of him, his flashlight beam illuminating her yellow and blue-clad chest. Still in shock, he goggled at the intruder, light purple hair slicked down by the rain and framing terrifying, glowing ... red ...

As the guardsman collapsed, Nam leapt forward again to catch him, then used his key to open the door and drag him inside. Opening the repair bay door for Sylvie to bring the DD in and under cover from prying eyes was the work of moments, then the both of them set to work at data terminals, using the centers' link to the private Genom corporate network to look for the data they needed. Though they hadn't fully succeeded when the guard buma started to come back online later on, they had some good leads, and with the DD it was a simple matter to crush them, destroy the shop to hide their tracks, and be gone before any backup or investigation could arrive.

It was kind of surreal, Nene had decided, the way spending so much time with her parents had made time seem to stop. She effectively only worked one day a week, spending the hours she'd normally sleep at Miribile, their odd, floating island in the Realm Between, where time was mainly a matter of opinion. Linna had joined her there as well for a couple of weeks, working to get her incredible strength under control, and Sylia had been back and forth a few times trying to understand the portal effect, but even with them, she would sometimes say or do something that would make them double-take, and suddenly realize she'd NEVER have done it 'a few days' before.

For example, she'd have to have been already drunk before grabbing Priss and hugging her in public before, but having spent so much time with little contact, her friends had become too precious to care about fussy rules of propriety even when she was technically still in her ADP uniform, though the jacket with all the badges and trim had been left in Linna's minivan. So, when Priss wandered out from the backstage area of Hot Legs, still in her stage costume but free of the big blonde wig, Nene broke off chaffering with Linna and latched onto the singer, who didn't quite seem to know what to make of it as the petite redhead enthused, "Priss! You were your usual terrific self tonight!" Then again, maybe she just couldn't breathe. Nene relaxed her grip some, not quite sure of her strength without the (currently) five-times-normal gravity of Miribile to counteract it.

"Oh, thank you," the singer replied, settling back slightly onto her feet as her hyperactive redheaded friend released her.

Linna, in a boat neck turquoise pullover with cow-spots and bluejeans, had followed the policewoman over at a much more sedate pace, still practically floating with happiness at the fun date she'd had the previous night, despite arriving for it a bit late after trouble on the highway. She smiled beatifically, suggesting, "How about I quit my job at Phoebe's and become your manager? If you want to sign with EMI, now's the time."

Having already been treated to a variation on this spiel while they waited, Nene broke in, complaining, "Mou, there you go again," as she released the quizzical musician, raising a hand by her lips to stage whisper, "Priss, do you know that Linna says that her latest boyfriend is one of EMI's directors?"

Ignoring the dark haired Saber's happy laugh, Priss drawled, "I don't want to know. I've had it with you crying your broken heart out."

Trembling with indignation, Linna exclaimed, "Meanies! It's serious this time, I tell you! I deserve happiness too."

A faint smile belying her put on disgust, Nene teased, "Being happy with Linna? What an awful thought."

"You got that right," Priss concurred, with an almost identical look.

Not buying it in the least, the irritated dancer growled, "Ooh, you're both picking on me!"

Further teasing was preempted as Sylvie and Nam joined the group, still in their form fitting motorcycle 'leathers' - actually nanoweave synthetics far more durable than real leather and colored in bright geometric patterns. Sylvie's was light blue and white with yellow on the torso, Nam's yellow with a wide, jagged blue stripe down the middle and little metal shoulder guards. "You look like you're having fun," the darker-haired sexaroid called out. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything."

Priss smiled briefly in welcome, before chiding, "You're late, Sylvie. I've already finished my last set."

Dipping her amber eyes, the pilot stammered, "S... sorry, I had a little... business to take care of." Brightening, she introduced, "Oh, this is my friend, Nam."

Taking the cue, the lavender haired girl stepped forward, bowing politely. "Pleased to meet you," she greeted them.

Linna had a somewhat catty expression on her face - one shared by several other women in the bar as they made perhaps less than favorable comparisons about themselves with the gorgeous new arrivals - while Nene simply seemed stunned. Priss had no such trouble, eyes screwed into happy crescents from her wide grin. "Heya! This is Nene and Linna," she enthused, returning Nene's energetic glomp from earlier and knocking the suprised redhead into Linna. Jarred out of their suprise, the other Sabers quickly schooled their expressions into reasonably welcoming smiles.

Finding her tongue first, Linna said, "Oh, ah, you're Sylvie, then? Priss has been telling us about you - how you're so stylish, and a terrific biker."

Nene, who'd used almost that exact phrasing before Priss came out, seemed torn between rueful exasperation and sliding back into the stunned look from a moment before.

"If you were a man, I'd make a pass at you, no sweat," Linna babbled.

Silvie, honestly flattered, demurred, "Oh, you're too kind." Extending her right hand American-style, she added, "It's a pleasure to meet you."

Not entirely familiar with the custom, the Sabers blinked owlishly at it, then Linna - slowly and very, very carefully, given recent developments - took it in her own right, replying, "Oh, same here."

Nene quickly followed suit with an uncertain laugh, then Priss and Nam joined the group shake as well.

"Well, since we're all here now, how about we get going?" the singer suggested.

"All right!" cheered Linna, now that the awkward introductions were over.

Nene gestured in the center of the circle they'd formed, saying, "Speaking of which, I heard of this great American style restaurant over on Kishimoto street today - Daley told me about it before leaving for the spaceport."

"Trust Nene to know where to find food," Priss laughed. "Okay, let's go there first, then head to the club. Just give me a few minutes to get my leathers on and check on the Reps."

*No doubt about it,* Sylia thought to herself, *This place is the definition of the word 'dive.' Totally, completely, and without exception or caveat.* A flickering neon sign half-hidden down a side alley proclaimed in inaccurate French, "Cest Lavie," with the subtitle "Pool bar" over a crude pink silhouette of someone lining up a shot. From there, the shabby stairwell down to the basement business was relatively well lit, but the best thing one could say about the interior was that at least the glasses were clean, and the prostitutes tended to stick to the game tables where they could show off their legs sitting on the rail.

Nursing a tequila that wouldn't have done anything for her enhanced metabolism even before the latest changes, she sat in her red business suit and white pumps, ignoring the itching of the mouse-brown wig her too distinctive steely hair was pinned up under and the hazel contacts over her purple irises in favor of a not-quite literally frosty glare at the man she was there to meet. Restraining herself from adding an actual heatsink field in his general area was taking a fair amount of will power, but poor taste aside, she couldn't deny that he was the best of her informants and fixers.

Now more than ever, she needed that efficiency, and to be fair, she had asked for this meeting without much lead time. Resigning herself to the necessity of dealing with a bit of unprofessionalism in the name of results, she eased off the death-glare and took another sip. *Bleah. I never understood the point of drinking this stuff. At least it's got a high caloric value as it oxidizes.* She'd been ravenously hungry for days after pulling that stunt with the possessed Griffon, and had later discovered she'd drained the batteries of Priss's hardsuit almost to the brink of shutdown while riding behind her.

Sensing the lightened tension, the blue-suited man sitting one stool away from her took a drag on his cigarette, running a hand through his short, blond hair before taking it back between two fingers to talk. "Sorry about this, Yoshimi," he drawled, using the alias she'd developed since 'Sylia Stingray' had gone missing.

"Same as ever, Fargo," she sighed, then complained, "Why don't you wear a nicer suit, for once?"

"Hey, sorry. I've got expenses, you know?" he replied, almost sounding sincere. "With the cost of living these days, that sort of thing's out of my reach. Anyway, did you have a look at the report I sent you?"

Nodding fractionally, she ran through it once more, the data called up instantly before she queried, "Kaufman at SDPC is in the hotseat, then?" It had been implied, but he still was trying to confirm it earlier.

"You've got it," the blond fixer agreed. "He was ambitious, and he'd gone far, but apparently he fell in with a Genom splinter group, secretly built a next generation superweapon, shipped it to a space station, and planned to sell it to the communists."

"The Doomsday battlemover, 'D.D.' I've heard about it here and there. Is it already finished, then?" 'Here and there' was perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, but one of her other sources had provided partial specs for the design. It wasn't something she'd have wanted to face with the original hardsuits, and even now it would take the whole team and a full roster of motoslaves to take it down for sure. The armor formulation was what she was planning on using for the next generation of the transforming cycles.

"They have a prototype," Fargo clarified. "Now what Kaufman wants is either its recovery or its destruction. Also, find his girlfriend, seems she turned out to be the thief. No leads on her ID though."

The Saber leader hummed noncommittally. "How about Cynthia? My team is too small for a serious dragnet." Nene's parents had been unable to help, restricted to dealing with spirit world threats only, and Nene herself wasn't skilled enough with her supernatural abilities to track the former buma the way she'd been found. She'd made dream-contact once, but couldn't stay with it to follow the girl's mind back to the waking world.

The fixer took another drag off his cigarette, and rubbed his eyes. "I've pulled about all the strings I can on that and still keep it reasonably quiet. No news yet, but my people will keep looking. With the D.D. on that shuttle, I think we can figure it was just a coincidence, not some kind of distraction." He took a slug of his own drink irritably, theorizing, "Hell, maybe the kid just ran away."

"Highly unlikely," the disguised woman argued. "She and her guardians loved each other dearly. Besides, the perimeter sensors would have picked up anyone on foot or in a vehicle. There's a faint trace of what has to be the D.D. leaving, and wreckage from the shuttle as it started to break up, but nothing else bigger than a barn owl and no thruster plumes, from the time she went to bed until they discovered she was missing."

"I'll keep doing what I can," Fargo affirmed. "There haven't been any rumors of a snatch like that lately, Yoshimi." He finished his drink, and they thought silently for a minute or two.

"I take it Genom Tower is at the core of the D.D. commission?" 'Yoshimi' asked, wrinkling her nose in distaste.

Knowing her opinion of the zaibatsu, Fargo caught her eyes and denied, "As a matter of fact, corporate Genom has nothing to do with this incident. If they find out about it, heads are liable to roll."

Frowning seriously, Sylia considered her reply. "This is a messy job, and it's a second missing person on top of our own. It's not going to come cheap."

"I've already deposited half the fee. You should find it acceptable," the blue-suited man gloated.

Seeing his avaricious grin, Sylia accepted the inevitable. "Fargo, I'm just no match for you. OK." *We need a good paying commission to help offset equipment losses lately,* she told herself. Finishing her own drink, she set the glass carefully back down on the bar, concluding, "I'll contact you in the usual manner. Ja ne."

*Even if it is like working for Genom, we couldn't let that thing run loose. We might as well take their money for what we'd do anyway,* she thought as the bar's door closed behind her.

The others had spent the time getting to know each other a little more while waiting for Priss, and Nam's recent conversion to the ranks of the motorcycle junkies had come up in the course of it. "It's kind of hard to explain," she said, "it's just completely different from riding in a car, or even a scooter." That the cars and scooters she referred to were the (so far space-only) maglev types used on the internal highway system of Genaros she left unsaid.

"Oh? I use a scooter, though I'm riding with Linna tonight, but mainly because it's cheap on power. I only have to recharge it every two or three days," the redhead replied.

The returning singer cut in with a snort. "Yeah, but you could probably get there faster on a bicycle, Nene. It'd be better for your hips, too." She couldn't help but snicker at the red-eye she got for that.

With a light smile at their antics, Nam held the door while the others filed out. "No scooter can *possibly* compare," she gushed. "Why don't you ride with me and see for yourself? Sylvie has an extra helmet."

"I could never ride one of those things," said Nene, looking unconvinced. She had technically ridden before on her motoslave, but never for long before switching to battleframe mode, or seperating so the motoroid could fight autonomously faced with multiple opponents.

"I used to think the same way," replied Nam, "but it's really fun with the wind whipping at you! Come on, I'll show you!" Hearing her, Sylvie unstrapped the pearly green helmet she'd bought for Anri to use and held it out to the redhead with an encouraging grin.

For her part, Nene gave Nam's gold and white bike a doubtful look; she was wearing a skirt after all. Then again, thanks to her parents' influence she'd quickly learned to have exercise shorts on under skirts these days, so it wouldn't be that big a deal, and it did sound like fun... "Oh, why not?" she finally agreed, accepting the proffered headgear and pulling it into place, before hiking the blue ADP uniform skirt up enough to climb on behind her new acquaintance.

* * *

><p>Continued in 08_BD_WOASS_Ch_ Shock! Oh oh... Don't you monkey with the monkey!<p>

* * *

><p>Notes for Part A<p>

That's right, it's a Reindeer Float(illa)-car, obtained through the use of forged Group 6 access gained when the master control program was hacked. You may groan now.

Some people may consider my treatment of the sexaroids to be rather bloodthirsty and harsh, especially given how I'd been developing the new/cameo characters right along with the canon cast. Well, I hate to say it, but all three of my additions were intended for the butcher's list from the very beginning. You'll note that I did let Hyatt get her own back first, however - since the whole Bloodsucker Barnaby subplot came up on its own, I figured it was only fair to resolve it before moving on. I've always figured there were even more buma in on the escape attempt that never made it to the scenes we see in BGC, and Mina, Hyatt, and Dot got the jobs. Further... everyone has a story, but some of them get cut off before they can be finished. It's a terrible thing to do, but that's the *point.*

VENUS Beam Cannon: Essentially, this is a Ghostbusters proton pack, tuned to affect normal matter as much as possible instead of as little as possible - as detailed above, it's a pretty ferocious weapon, where the GB versions barely set toilet paper rolls on fire and scorched wallpaper.

IFF transponder: Short for 'Identification Friend or Foe,' any aircraft without one is assumed to be hostile in this timeframe thanks to the Polar War, and faces stiff penalties even if it turns out to have been a mistake or equipment failure. Essentially, a radio transmitter that constantly sends a signal saying 'this is who I am, condition normal' but they can also be set to broadcast an emergency in progress.

Nam's sonic forcefield: While squarely in the realm of anime physics, this effect is canonical for the Bionic Six's Meg, who used it in several episodes I can remember. I'd originally had the sexaroids' names confused and thought that the extra one I'd had escape was also named Meg (where she's actually Nam), hence the reference. By the time I realized the error, I'd worked her into the post-OVA plans too thoroughly to excise.

Shepard's Prayer - Formulated by Alan Shepard on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, "Please God, don't let me fuck up." A bit earlier is another ref as when Ground Control asked him to repeat the muttered statement he replied "Ah, I said 'Everything's A-OK.'"

Sclera - the scientific term for the whites of the eye - obviously, I can't call them 'whites' when Largo's are black.

Why 'Magnus' instead of 'Maxemillian' Largo? Well what other villain do we know whose name is (Erik) Magnus L_ and levitates metal objects? Canon Largo would be far too weak to be a threat even without the developments of this and the next chapter.

Canned coffee - yep, they actually do have cans of coffee in vending machines in Japan. Alcohol, too, but probably not in the workplace, at least, not in machine shop type workplaces.

Genom appears to have absorbed Suzuki at some point, though the latest GSX as of 2005 is still the 1300 Hayabusa. It's stats give a higher top speed than a 2030s ADP Interceptor in super-pursuit mode, though, so I'm not sure I even want to think about a _2_300... On an interesting note, the grey bike Priss is riding before Sylia recruits her in the (officially included in canon) _Asu e Touchdown_ music video is the same model Sylvie has in OVA 5. While this video is not Bubblegum Disaster canon, you can figure that she had one like it when she hung out with the Outriders in that time frame - which is why I say Sylvie and Nam's have been modified for greater performance, if Dr. Raven's custom built racing bike that Priss has in this OVA (apparently as good as new again after having the front oil floatation bearing fail trying to race the Griffin) is evenly matched with Sylvie's canon bike. The yellow and black riding leathers she dug out of the closet after getting her red ones trashed last episode are from the same source. I'll add an image of them to the web site and mailing list.

Linna's boyfriend, Saito Yasuo, is named for the Japanese voice actor who played the shinigami Takuto in the Full Moon Wo Sagashite anime. He also looks a bit like an older Takuto, but since Ta is your typical brown-haired anime guy aside from the shinigami costume that's not saying much.

Sylia drinking for the calories - alcohol can support an open flame, you know. She needs as much energy as she can hoard for her abilities, since that fusion backpack didn't work too well. (Hint: that dull rumble and shudder that ran through the base WASN'T the shuttle crashing...)

And yes, her new ID as "Yoshimi" is inspired by the Flaming Lips song, "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" even though buma are rarely pink.

Nene and shorts-under-skirts: She won't wear anything that she can't kick in unless there's something under it in case it has to be hastily removed. A couple of suprise training sessions and one dream-eater surprise attack were all it took to instill this habit.

Credits are in part b as well

EOF


	10. Chapter 5b

**Late update due to gaming crash. I went back to the MMO I used to play (since Transformers Universe hasn't opened yet, supposedly it's due to begin as a Beta next month... for which I signed up back in the spring, because TRANSFORMERS!) and discovered that they'd added a new server, so I naturally had to help populate it.**

08_BD_WOASS_Ch_05b

2010-10-30 - Fixed a couple of missing or repeated word errors  
>2009-11-29 - credits fix &amp; new annotation<br>2009-11-22 - just a couple of spelchekz  
>2007-06-11 - continuity edit<br>2007-06-07 - the typical just-posted-it-why-didn't-I-see-that-before errors fixed, including a couple of fairly major continuity glitches and numerous spelchekz  
>2007-06-04 - added a look in Priss's head to clarify while facing down Sylvie, and vagued something else up<br>2007-06-02 - FINISHED! First draft anyway, now I just need to get it online somehow...  
>2007-06-01 - yatta! fixed Cynthiabuma flashback & got to The Big Twist.  
>2007-05-31 - split the chapter into two files as it was becoming inconveniently large, with six scenes completed (from Ride Free) and one partial (Nam &amp; Sylvie return)<p>

Continued from 08_BD_WOASS_Ch_

The observation room was dark as Leon and Nene entered, despite the bright skies outside - it had to be, to keep those inside from showing through the two-way mirror to the psych ward room beyond. Dr. Yamane waved them to take seats at the desk within, and the redheaded policewoman gratefully complied, folding the keyboard out from her tablet to type notes - even with three decades of refinements and her own improvements, the handwriting recognition was still a bit dodgy. Seeing her nod, the doctor gave her observations.

"The patient's name is Naota Watanabe, after hours security officer for Kisaragi Cyberdroid Service Center in the Kawasaki district. Last night, it appears he was attacked by this 'Bakemono Burglar' that has the papers in an uproar. Like the previous victims, he reports only getting a glimpse of the person involved, and even under hypnosis the only description he can give is that they were slight, like a woman or a young boy, and had brightly glowing red eyes after taking off a visor or possibly motorcycle goggles. After that, he fell unconscious, and didn't revive until the fire department arrived after the Kisaragi shop exploded."

On the far side of the glass, Watanabe shuddered and clutched at his bedcovers, as a burly male orderly entered with a meal tray. They could see him stammering a frightened challenge and the man's soothing response, but soundproofing prevented the conversation from carrying to the observation area since the microphones were turned off.

Yamane ran a hand through her short black hair, before continuing, "Mr. Watanabe's mental trauma from the incident is severe, easily the worst of the victims so far. He becomes distraught if a person matching the assailant's build is present, especially if their eyes are uncovered - as you saw, the orderlies have to borrow a pair of goggles from the lab to bring his meals, or he's too agitated to eat. He was moved to this ward after becoming violent with the intake nurse when she tried to check his pupil response with the light in her opthalmascope, and had to be sedated. I've had to limit my contact with him for those reasons, but my colleague Dr. Shelby is out sick today, and as head of the department he's been keeping me up to date."

"As I said, the patient was severely shaken by his experience, and seems to have suffered some sort of supernatural nightmare while unconscious, though he avoids any questions on the subject at best, more often becoming incoherent, muttering about monsters, ghosts, and wizards controlling his mind with the jigan. Since his previous psychological records list him as being somewhat excitable but well grounded in reality, it's Dr. Shelby's professional opinion that this nightmare is the effect of the current media frenzy acting as a suggestion to his unconscious mind."

Leaning against the back wall, Leon scoffed and quipped, "Monsters, wizards, and the Evil Eye? Of course it's just a delusion, none of that stuff is real, right Nene?"

Caught off guard by such a question, and wondering just how he'd react if she contradicted him, Nene stammered, "Buh-ah, of course they're not real, eh heh..."

Attention more on his thoughts than her reply, he grunted contemplatively, then asked Dr. Yamane, "Those previous reports, they're from his cybernetics post-operation counseling? Is there any sign of BDD?"

The psychiatrist's eyes flared as the frowned, giving him a stern glare. "I assure you, Mr. Watanbe's condition with regards to his cybernetic arm and lower leg remains in the top .5 percentile - in fact, the familiarity of talking about them with a professional without worry or awkwardness is one of the ways Dr. Shelby has found to calm him when he becomes too upset about this more recent trauma." Yamane's gaze turned even more steely as she concluded, "Even if he were experiencing difficulties with his prosthetics, Mr. Watanabe falls well blow the 70% cutoff point, Inspector."

Nene eeped at the steel in the other woman's tone, and even Leon flinched back in his seat. *Looks like Yamane-sensei doesn't approve of the 70% law,* the pink-haired Saber thought, grinning in spite of herself at the sight of her brash senior cowed by the petite doctor.

Striving to regain his composure, Leon waved his hands placatingly and temporized, "No one's looking for trouble, Doc, but it's my job to be concerned when someone with cybernetics is having mental problems. I'm sure I speak for everyone in the AD Police when I say we'd be happy if your department could put ours out of business."

Still far from reassured, the doctor softened her glare from piercing to merely skeptical.

The ride back from the hospital was mostly silent; Nene paying attention to the slightly unfamiliar task of driving a car rather than her scooter; Leon churning over the few leads they had. Finally, as they neared the station, he grunted in dissatisfaction and leaned back, the seat back tilting with a thunk as he released the catch.

Familiar enough with her coworker to know that meant he'd set the problem aside for the moment to let his subconscious chew on it, the redhead shot him a quick glance and asked, "I've seen the newsfax, of course, but do people really think it's some kind of oni? I didn't think the old myths were believed much any more."

"Eh, just the usual crazies," Leon drawled, adjusting his shades. "That's what I like about this town, it's never dull. It's mostly the newshounds chasing the excitement of the moment, but some folks are going off the deep end. There was a call for the N-Police yesterday when a crowd at some shrine started getting rowdy after they ran out of wards to sell... But it's strange, none of the men at the places that were attacked have gotten anything worse than a few bruises consistent with falling off their feet, and as far as we can tell from the wreckage nothing seems to be missing." Peering over the top of the wraparounds, he quipped, "Maybe the bakemono only likes to eat girls."

Nene, with certain knowledge that such things were not only possible but increasingly common as word of Kami-sama's death spread through the underworld, gave it rather more serious consideration than he'd intended, speculating, "My dad told me a story once about an eight headed dragon that only ate girls, and if he swallowed a boy by mistake he'd spit him back out." Grinning suddenly, she mused, "I should keep an eye out as well, that sounds like a fun fight!"

"Ha!" The chestnut haired Inspector flipped upright in surprise, sunglasses sliding off to dangle from one ear as he gave her an incredulous look.

Suddenly, realization struck. "Eh heheh, I mean it would be a fun fight, uh... for a ... martial artist ... movie, yeah. You know, like 'Jane Li vs. Jade Chan in _Attack of the Bakemono Burglar!_'" she backpedaled, deepening her voice and giving it a melodramatic tone. She laughed nervously and kept her eyes assiduously on the road, hoping her more skeptical sempai would buy it.

Her silent prayers appeared to be answered; Leon collected himself and leaned back once more, dismissing the whole supernatural aspect with a snort as he settled his shades comfortably again. "Given the destruction and the descriptions the guards have given, it's a lot more likely that it's a buma, looking for something we haven't figured out yet."

"A buma?" Nene protested. "Buma can knock people out with eye-beams!" Certainly, no buma the Sabers had ever faced could do such a thing... Or were their suit visors protection against it? Lots of buma had glowing eyes, now and then, for sure.

"It might," he replied, "if it was a 33-S type buma, that had a hypnotic function. Of course, none of them are around any more, since it was the one model that was completely banned."

"I'll admit, it's a little easier to picture you chasing a strange buma in a K-suit than some fire-breathing oni," Nene remarked.

He smirked, then sighed resignedly. "There's a lot of pressure from above to solve this one quickly, since they're targeting Genom-affiliated businesses. At the same time, it seems none of them are actually big enough to make it worth Genom's time to send their bully-boys in, when a quiet word in the right ear gets us out in force. Not that we'd let anyone get away with it, but it would be nice to do without the political games."

The car was silent again for a few minutes, as she pulled off the highway to return to the ADPolice building. "Oh, drop me off at Hangar Three, would you?" Leon requested. "They're giving me some new patrol bike to test." At her nod, he gave the redhead his best 'Nice Guy' smile and wink and invited, "If you like action movies like that, you should come to my squad's barbecue party on Friday evenings, Nene. They're a little rough, but a good bunch at heart." Then it was her turn to boggle, at least until he shouted to watch out for the turn-off.

Nene had passed the Inspector's theories on to Sylia, and admitted that since her parents hadn't found traces from an active demon, they looked like the most probable explanation. "I've done some checking, and there's a few traces as if someone was doing some cracking from the businesses that were attacked, too well hidden for the regular ADP computer team to find. But, I'm still not sure why the 33-S was banned," she added.

"It became troublesome when external weapon linkages from combat-class buma were added to them," Sylia explained, a blush lighting her fair features as she continued, "Their use before that was scandalous enough. It was a sexaroid type."

Wide eyed, Nene repeated, "A sexaroid?" She ducked her head and hid a matching blush behind one hand as she squealed, "So they really do exist!"

"I thought you weren't interested in perverted things like that," Sylia scolded, tapping her finger against the monitor over her younger friend's nose.

"Whyyy nooot?" the policewoman whined, before a different train of thought brightened her over-dramatic sulky expression. "I wonder if they're as pretty as the girl I met yesterday?"

Accepting the topic change, the steely haired Saber inquired, "Oh? Who's that?"

"One of Priss's biker friends. Her name's Sylvie, and is she hot! She's got a body to die for, and her other friend Nam isn't far behind," the redhead enthused while clasping her hands, suffused with romantic bliss, before leaning in conspiratorially to wink and share, "Priss gets along with her unusually well."

"With Nam?"

"No, Sylvie. Nam let me ride on her cycle to see what it was like while they raced to the restaurant after leaving Hot Legs."

The Saber leader hummed noncommittally, then concluded, "Sounds like someone I might like to meet. Anyway, inform me if something else happens, all right?"

"You got it!" Nene chirped, before shutting down the link.

The frown Sylia had been hiding behind her usual calm front settled onto her face, and she was left to contemplate the implications of a 33-S on the loose at the same time as a battlemover designed for operation with a synchronized pilot.

In a low rent, single room loft, Nam and Anri were stirring around quietly, going about their morning routines. They'd found themselves to be quite compatible as room mates, having similar tastes for the most part, though Anri didn't share the other buma's passion for Transystyr Systyr (especially at high volume) preferring the more laid back style of reggae, or ska in her more energetic moods. The local retrothrash band whose leader Sylvie and Nam had befriended seemed to be a happy compromise solution, and the demo chip she'd gotten from them was playing quietly as Nam slipped into her underthings and pulled the nightgown off over her head.

Thinking about Priss and her friends brought other questions to mind, and she decided finally to just come right out with it. "Ne, Anri," she queried, "do you mind if I ask you a question about Sylvie?"

Looking up as she slipped on her brassiere, the green-haired sexaroid blinked and hummed negatively, "Mhm-m. What is it?"

"Um... well, doesn't it bother you that she's been spending the night with someone else?" the medic buma asked.

"Don't think badly of Sylvie," Anri explained. "She and I are the best of friends, close enough to keep each other company when the night's too lonely, but we're not really... you know, romantic. I just don't like girls that much, the way Sylvie does. I'm happy for her, really Nam, and she'd be happy for me if I find a guy I like."

"I... I guess I understand," the speedster replied. "I never really cared either way, I just wanted to find someone to share feelings with."

Catching her room mate's phrasing, Anri grinned mischievously. "Wanted to? Have you found someone, then? Maybe that cute redhead you mentioned..."

Blushing and stuttering, Nam could only stammer incoherently for a moment. "N... No!" she finally forced out. "It's nothing like that, we're just going to look at motorcycles since she liked riding behind me the other night!"

"Ooooh," Anri teased, nodding knowingly. "She likes you from behind, then!" She laughed merrily as Nam buried her beet red face in her hands and curled up in embarrassment.

Fortunately for her, any further teasing was preempted by the faint sounds of the other bed's occupant waking up, and the two of them hastened to finish getting dressed.

Lady Miyaumoto paused in her morning promenade, looking over the visitors in her domain speculatively as they arrived on two of the smaller sort of annoying-loud-wheely-thing humans were so fond of. The red-furred one proceeded toward the food dispensers nearby, while the other, blue and white dappled nearly as splendidly as the Lady's own brown and white, partook of the fresh breeze and admirable view. Miyaumoto approved, a healthy regard for the necessities of life in one, and a fine sense of aesthetics for the other.

As she herself was returning from a jaunt to the shore, where there had been a delectable bit of crab leg left in a crevice by one of the gulls, the Lady padded over to the red one, calling for attention as the two of them seemed caught up in their own discussion. Honestly, humans were so silly sometimes! Who gave a hairball about buma or the Genom Production Control Center on the skyline when there were sandwiches to be had? Reminded of the more important things, the red one bowed down to her, and rendered tribute in the form of a hearty helping of the still-warm fast food burger, but withheld the remainder most rudely when asked for a second helping. Ungrateful creature, and to think, Miyaumoto had deigned to strop against her leg earlier!

Here the Ungracious One's companion interceded, showing the true nobility of tabby-coats as she offered the entirety of her own hamburger to compensate. Lady Miyaumoto magnanimously decided to forgive the pair in light of the gesture, and even allowed herself to be held and stroked by the Noble One when she had finished her repast. Ah, a superior patterned coat, the scent of life and healthy energy, and talented hands as well! Letting bygones be bygones, she sang her appreciation, the low throaty tones of a premiere soloist.

Watching as her lover cradled the stray, Priss gave a lopsided grin of amusement. "Looks like it likes you, Sylvie. I almost thought it was going to attack me when I wouldn't give it any more of mine." The grin widened as she reached out to stroke one of the other woman's shoulders and teased, "I guess you've just got the magic touch, ne?"

Sylvie blushed slightly as she hugged the purring moggie closer, turning back to look out over the bay. "Ah, Priss, don't exaggerate," she replied. *Even this cat is free,* she thought happily, basking in the morning sun.

Finished with her own food, Priss wadded up the wrapper and tossed it in a nearby bin with her cola can, then swung onto her bike. "Well, let's go," she prompted, explaining, " I've got a rehearsal coming up, and a sound check after we set up at the club."

Sylvie set down the cat, with a final stroke as it rubbed affectionately against her knees before wandering off. "Ah?" *But it's so nice here, and we didn't leave Genaros just to start following new orders,* she thought, waffling for a moment. The sheer joy of self-determination made up her mind, and she replied easily, "I think I'll stay here a little longer."

Priss straightened on the saddle, smarting at the brush off, and the buma woman tried to explain. Unfortunately, the amazing, intoxicating feeling of freedom after a life of servitude was just too big to put into words, and all she could do was blurt, "I, am... free. I'm free now! You see?" She spread her arms, trying to indicate the unbounded world of possibilities all around them, just waiting to be explored in any direction.

No more enlightened, the singer could only repeat, "Free?"

Sylvie gave her a megawatt smile, and a flirty wink from one amber eye. "Right!"

Still puzzled, Priss could only figure it must be a personal space thing - she understood that, at least. "I don't know what you're talking about, but I'll catch you later." Helmet strapped on, she started the bike and kicked off, a farewell shout of "Call me!" tossed over a shoulder as she let the clutch out and merged into the slow mid-morning traffic.

Sylvie waved energetically, but was saddened by the thought that her lover probably didn't even really understand her own freedom, or how precious it was. Then again, she'd rather no one ever had to go through a life like her own, even if it meant being so oblivious to what they had. With a melancholy smile, she leaned against the rail once more, watching the gulls and the ships in the bay.

Since his cruiser still hadn t been replaced, and two bikes would fit in his parking place at home, Leon had just used the new motorcycle unit he'd been assigned to commute - he was supposed to be testing the thing anyway, right? Even better, it saved trying to find a spot in the cramped police parking garage, since he could just return it to Hangar Three where the support equipment for the prototype had been set up. As he shut it down and undid the clasp on his helmet strap, Kenty Yeager, the head mecha technician, slipped out of the partially disassembled K-11 she was working on and headed over to greet him.

"Hey Leon, how do you like the new toy so far? Had any chances to open 'er up?" she asked.

"I only got it from you last night, you know. You didn't even explain what the heck the thing is, except that it's more than just a bike," he complained.

"Eh?" She blinked and cocked her head at him, a grease stain on one cheek making her look absolutely adorable - he certainly hoped Yeager appreciated her, the lucky bastard, and given that the brunette's pregnancy was just starting to show he damn well better. "I sent you the user manual a week ago, as soon as you were picked to test one."

Leon thought about the stack of coffee cans competing with his inbox for a height record, and concentrated on maintaining his cool look.

Relenting, Kenty shook her head at the vagaries of of detectives, and launched into a quick summary, pointing out controls and display items as they were mentioned. "It's called a Police Motorcycle Battloid, or P. M. B. for short, and it's Genom R&D's latest answer to our need for better equipment to use against rogue security and military buma - though judging by the photos I've seen, not to mention the evidence materials that have been taken by various government agencies 'for further study' it's probably as direct a copy as they can manage of the motorcycle-based units your Knights in shining hardsuits like to use, and you'll need to be wearing the special body armor that you left behind last night in order to pilot it in battleframe mode."

Here she gave the Inspector a stern look. "Without it, the unit can still transform and accept voice commands if you dismount, but it doesn't use a buma brain so it's not very smart at all, not even as much as a trained animal. With the suit, it's still a little less armored than a K-11, but far beyond their specs, even the new K-12S, in practically every other way - speed, strength, agility, even the combat computer that drives the heads-up display can track more targets more accurately and actually predict what known enemy types are likely to do, as well as where hits will land and tracking the origin and path of gunfire."

She started going into the specifics then, Leon paying close attention as it seemed he'd greatly underestimated the bike's capabilities before, having thought it was just some attempt at a cost saving measure over cruisers when the ADP rarely arrested anyone - even in cases of normal civilian models that went rogue due to being misused or poorly maintained, the owners were more likely to be fined than detained, and if they did need to be taken anywhere it was usually in an ambulance.

Not to mention, he just loved piloting, on those occasions he had the chance to get in some Armored Trooper time. If the Department wanted to give him one of his very own, he sure wasn't going to complain!

Mackie had gone looking for his sister, needing authorization for the new design he and Dr. Raven had worked out before they started ordering parts and materials. He found her in her office talking on the videophone, one hand still holding a pen, and the customer copy of a delivery invoice in front of her for the trailer that had arrived around mid day - one that held the wreckage of the Batmobile, which had been confiscated by the police but eventually sold at auction after investigations found that it held no leads to finding the Sabers, who weren't actually wanted on charges more serious than disturbing the peace and flight from crime scenes anyway, and far from giving any insight on their advanced technology, was built with components and techniques over two decades outdated.

If it wasn't for the fact that it was his logical, unflappable sister he was talking about, he'd almost have said... *Wait... No, no way! She can't be...* The teen's thoughts trailed off as Sylia finally capped the pen and stuffed it in a pocket before wiping at her eyes and actually *sniffling.* "Sis?" he asked, quietly. "Are you okay? I mean, you're..."

Sylia jumped, for all her advanced senses still having been too distracted to notice him approach. "Still human despite it all, it seems," she replied, voice trembling. "It's silly of me, and illogical, but... The Wayne money, and companies, and even the estate in America, none of that was ever Daddy's true legacy to me... All of that was just what he used as a disguise, the mask he hid behind. The real Bruce Wayne was the one who had a secret underground base, who put on a kevlar suit almost every night and went out to stand between the bad guys and the people of his city, the one who had the most amazing car in the world. Mother -"

She choked up, and had to wipe at the tears over running her eyes again. Mackie looked helplessly at the grey-haired man on the screen, who shrugged and mouthed "I was there too," before waving his attention back to Sylia. After making use of a hanky, the words flowed on, as unstoppable as the tears, or the tremors shaking her like a rag doll in her younger brother's embrace. "Mother once told me that as a baby, sometimes the only way to get me to quiet down at night was to go for a ride in that car, with its engine that rumbled and purred like a huge cat, none of the normal ones would do the trick. And now..."

Stuffing the balled up kerchief back in a pocket, she choked off a derisive laugh before it could become a sob. "It wasn't even this car, the one she talked about got replaced years before he died. But it's still... I just..." Words failed her, and all Sylia could do was hold and be held by her only remaining blood relative.

"It was a fine car and a great loss, but how many did Bruce lose this way? Remember that it was made to be used; a tool like your suits," the man on the screen told her. "In fact, I remember taking you on some of those rides with your mom; that car got wrecked in a chase with the Joker when he used an exploding cream pie launcher built into the back of the one that nut was driving at the time." Seeing Mackie's alarmed look at the pickup when he'd casually mentioned 'suits' the stranger assured him, "Not to worry, it's a secure line, and like I said I've been in the family business for a while. Dick Grayson, once called Robin, then Nightwing up until I had to retire. You must be Mackie. I've heard a lot about you."

"Yeah, that's me. Uh, I guess I've heard about you, too. If you're retired, though, then who's..."

"The current Batman? Well, I really shouldn't say. I am still in on the background end of things, though. Anyway, I've go to go, time difference in the US and all. Just keep helping Cee out, okay? Bruce adopted me before even meeting your mom, so she's my sister too, you know?"

Patchy clouds on the horizon still floated like purple and orange ghosts of the sunset, but the storm front due sometime after midnight was still well out to sea, so those few stars bright enough to make it through the city's glow were as clear as they ever were over most of Megatokyo that evening. At one of the large, automated depots for the still ongoing Kanto Earthquake Recovery Zone, they were blocked by something still less permeable - plumes of smoke from the security buma that had been stationed there. The low-grade construction buma that were based at the facility had continued to function obliviously, at least until their control link to the GPCC mainframe had been taken over for other purposes.

The one human evening overseer was slumped in a corner of his office unconscious, while at his terminal Nam's fingers moved so quickly they seemed to have disappeared as she abused their stolen access while it lasted, relentlessly hunting down the data they desperately needed. Just outside, Sylvie held the DD Battlemover ready to take off at a moment's notice - they'd made too much of a disruption to go unnoticed for long, but hacking the control connection alone would have seen to that so there was no point to subtlety this time. She could hear sirens in the distance, and was about to call for Nam to abandon the search and go when she heard the lavender-haired sexaroid's triumphant cry, then there was a blur of color as she zipped out and up to a perch on the DD's back. Not waiting for anything to go wrong, she fired the battlemover's thrusters and took off into the night.

In his temporary quarters on Genaros, Daley Wong shut off the videodisc player, a disgusted look still on his face. He'd barely seen Kaufmann into the airlock of a shuttle, handcuffed and escorted by a pair of SSPD officers, before someone had nudged him from behind and shoved it into his hands, vanishing into the crowd of rubberneckers before he could even turn around. He'd seen some truly nasty things in a his time as a cop - just working cleanup after a buma rampage could ensure that on any given day, thanks to the difference between their strength and durability and that of a human - and he'd always figured you couldn't really be in the ADP and think of buma as people per se, but that hadn't made it any easier to watch - he hadn't even been able to tell it was a buma on the operating table in the first scenes until enough of the skin was off to show the reinforced rib cage, and that would have been bad enough on its own, even if the perp had been sitting in a cell in front of him.

It was the murderous looks the nurse had thrown at the man doing the job whenever his back was turned, and the tears that even crappy low-quality surveillance camera footage could catch as she cleaned up afterwards that were the worst, because that said the bastard had at least some misuse of authority that let him get away with doing things like that, and making others take part. The fact that it was almost certainly another buma... It didn't really matter, not this time.

Then, that clip had ended, and the next one showed the buma who'd been tortured - he had to go back to the beginning, to where her face was intact enough to recognize, to make sure, but it was her - toting a submachine gun, standing beside another buma (though that wasn't apparent at first, either) with several more people unidentifiable in the background as the same man confronted them, and the second woman blurred with superhuman speed to knock him against a wall. The former victim then proceeded to empty the gun's large clip into him, less than a minute later being cut in half herself by debris when one of the float-cars exploded.

That hadn't been the end, though - as he knew all too well, buma were damn hard to kill, and apparently that extended even to sexaroids. In the next clip, she was back on an operating table, screaming as some kind of heat-sealing tool was used to fuse her skin to the cruder synthetic of a mannequin-class hip and leg assembly, while that utter asshole Kaufmann directed the process in between interrogating her about the other sexaroids and the shuttle they'd stolen, without much luck.

That still wasn't quite the end, though - there had been one more scene, of the poor girl in some kind of isolation cell, naked except for old blood around the marks of a brutal beating, and copious amounts of fresh being coughed up uncontrollably until it had literally pooled around her huddled form. The mannequin-class parts seemed oddly warped, and he wondered about that for a moment. There weren't really any sensors in most of a mannequin's shell at all, so it was unlikely to be a result of the abuse she'd still been undergoing. Of course, expecting the kind of slime who'd do such a thing to make rational decisions was its own kind of folly, but still...

It was only when the wall beneath her had torn away, leaving behind a fringe of ropy cables fluttering in the escaping atmosphere that he realized it was similar to the way scavenged materials looked when a one of the more recent buma types used them to add a weapon or patch their armor as the nanites worked on it, a guess confirmed by the last part of the disk.

It was an audio-only recording of a voice with the metallic overtones of an active-mode security type, leaving a message for him personally. It said, "Hyatt was one of the gentlest souls any of us ever met - no one could believe it when she was the one who gunned down Barnaby. Believe this Inspector if you believe nothing else I say: she was only his last victim, one of many, and if anyone deserved to die it was that bastard. She'd been used as a testbed for fusion nanites similar to the ones now incorporated into the BU-55C, but it never worked before the incident you saw. She has already died three times for nothing more than the quest for her own freedom; please, if she somehow makes it to Earth after all this, and ends up in your area, just let her be."

That was it, finally, and the black screen had turned to static until he shut it down. The hell of it was, as a police officer he couldn't condone murdering a man, but as a person he couldn't begin to pretend that Hyatt deserved any more punishment that she'd already received, buma or not. He ejected the disk and scowled at it for a minute or so, before shattering it under a boot heel.

Enough. He still had to check a few last leads, then contact Leon and warn him about what he'd discovered about the DD. There was police work to be done, and it had nothing to do with any 33-S except the one piloting that battlemover.

Magnus Largo glided into Flint's office like the specter of death itself, smooth and collected and radiating an icy hatred that would make the coldest winter days, when the snow squealed underfoot and every breath made the lungs and teeth ache, seem like a vacation in Hawaii. "Tell me, Flint," he commented scathingly, "Is there ANYONE competent in your organization at ALL? First the bungled assassination last week, now it seems that Kaufmann has been arrested, for arranging to smuggle the DD."

Ignoring the executive's outraged sputtering, the tall, white haired man with the gold-on-black eyes stalked over to the desk and hauled him out of it by the collar, eliciting a startled squawk from Flint, along with a desperate glance at the two bodyguard buma still standing obliviously by the door.

"They can't see me," Largo explained, "or hear me, or you, or anything else I don't want them to detect. As far as their senses can tell them, you are still sitting right here, reading files, and in just a moment you're going to tell them to leave, because you're about done for the night." At this the older man tried again to protest, only to be cut off with a sinister glare. "Your cooperation is not required, and believe me, you are quite finished. We're going to go for a little... trip, you and I. Now."

Behind them, the frames of the office windows warped and slid aside, and a hazy blue sphere of energy formed around Magnus and his unwilling companion then lifted them out and away, the windows again closing behind them. Shortly after, the bodyguards acknowledged words that only they could hear, and quietly left the office to head back to their maintenance cycle cubicles.

It was about 10 PM by the time Sylvie and Nam got back to the loft, but Anri had stayed up waiting for them, too worried to rest, and their other house guest, the former buma Cynthia, had stayed up with her, alternately telling the sexaroid that she could see them and everything was fine, and pleading with her to just sit still so she could heal the daily blood degradation her damaged mechanical systems were unable to slow. The little blonde had joined them right after they bailed out of the Orca IV, flying to meet the airborne battlemover in a bubble of light after helping the shuttle along far enough that it would crash in the next valley over, instead of in the horse field.

As if that hadn't been strange enough, she'd been accompanied by a pair of actual fairies, beautiful tiny girls that fluttered along on butterfly wings shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow, and when they'd landed and she learned that Anri was hurt, Cynthia had conferred with them for a bit, then bathed the comatose buma in a differently hued glow, making the barely scabbed-over wound heal as they watched. Sylvie had still been holding her partner in her lap in the opened cockpit, and had caught enough of the fringe of the effect to feel revitalized as well, the fatigue of the nerve wracking manually controlled approach falling away like mud under a hose.

Anri had awakened then to find the child peering earnestly at her, then explaining with a smile, "Hi! I made you better, but your buma part is still broken. You should go back with me to Miss Cecilia! She can fix it for you."

Bewildered, the green-tressed sexaroid had turned to Sylvie, who was still clutching her as if afraid she'd run away. "This is Cynthia," the smiling pilot introduced. "Cynthia, this is my partner Anri. I don't know how you healed her, but thank you. Are you some kind of buma? Is Cecilia your owner?"

The little girl giggled and bounced happily on the fallen tree she'd sat upon. "I used to be, but Miss Cecilia fixed me when the giant robot attacked and Priss-oneesan had to cut it away from my leg, and then she took me to see a nice man who took all the metal out so I could be a normal girl. But he died then, so he can't take your metal out." The fairy in white, who had short, silvery hair, inserted a comment, using an audio datasquirt the sexaroids couldn't quite catch. "Yuki says I could learn to do magic like the nice man did," the blonde continued, "but it's really hard so it would take a long time. Are you sure you can't let Miss Cecilia fix you? She's not my owner, because normal people don't get owned. She's the boss for Nan and Grampa Akimoto, and everyone there is my friend!"

Sylvie shook her head. "We have to make it a secret that we're here. Can you keep a secret?"

"Uh-huh. I hafta keep lots of secrets, because of I see things that are private, even if I'm not trying sometimes. Nan Akimoto taught me it's important to keep what other people do private unless it's hurting somebody or they say it's okay. But Miss Cecilia is really good at keeping secrets too, so I'm sure it would be okay." This time it was the dark-haired fairy who chimed in, the light one just chirping agreement. "Hotaru says Anri-neesan really needs to have her parts fixed, or else get healed like that every day," Cynthia finished worriedly. She looked over at Nam, who'd slumped against the tree stump and was very pale, thanks to the use she'd had to make of her 35-A patch during the escape, but who had followed the conversation with a wide eyed wonder, having always had a love of magic and fairy tales. "You're kinda sick too, I think, like the way Anri-neesan was because her metal stuff is broken. I can help you too, I think, but your metal parts all seem okay."

"Our systems weren't built that way," the speedster replied, after a moment of shock. "Even working properly we still get sick like this, because the men who made us wanted to make sure they could stay our owners. It happens faster with me, but Sylvie would need maintenance in a few months, as well. We just want to be normal people too."

Cynthia gasped, "That's horrible! Just hold still a minute." She gathered power again as she spoke, then plied the same radiance over Nam, who sighed in relief as the status alerts from her diagnostics died down and the logy, sick feeling in her body was replaced by an amazing energy.

"Oh, that feels so nice," she sighed. "As a Bio-Maintenance nurse I heard stories about 'having a healing touch,' but nothing like that. I wish I could do it."

"Yuki taught me," the blonde child noted, "So maybe you can learn too. But, you're grown-ups, so if you went away and don't have owners anymore, can't you get fixed?"

"That's why we came here," Sylvie answered her, "so we can find out how. We still have to get the data from the bad guys, though. That's why being here is a secret." She thought quickly, moral qualms struggling with expedience, and genuine need. "It'll only take a little while, maybe you could come with us, to help us keep from getting sick while we get it, and then go back to Miss Cecilia and your grandparents when we're done?"

Anri had sat up indignantly in her lap, then, and hissed into her ear, "What on earth are you doing, Sylvie, taking advantage of this child like that? All we have to do is leave, and let her tell anyone who asks as much - they'll know we were on the shuttle anyway as soon as they check with the station!"

"It gives us more time," the pilot whispered back, "and without what she just did, we'd have to replace your blood supply every day. How do you think I'd have to do that? It's not like we're going to hurt her or keep her forever - hell, she CARRIED the Orca somehow, I don't think we even could if she doesn't want to..."

There had been a bit more discussion, but in the end the girl had agreed to come with them for a little while, to help keep their secret and find the design data they needed to get their systems rebuilt correctly. In the weeks since, she'd become like a little sister or even a daughter to the runaways, perhaps even a living symbol of the freedom their comrades had died to give them, a former buma who now lived as a human girl. Cynthia had finally drifted off half an hour ago, too exhausted to keep her eyes open any longer, but Yuki and Hotaru fluttered over to dance happy rings in the air around the returning pair.

For her part, Anri threw herself at the other sexaroids, taking them both into a relieved embrace. "Thank goodness, you're both all right," she whispered. After a few seconds, she reluctantly released them. "Please, don't do this any more, it's too dangerous. If one of you got caught, you'd be eliminated for sure! You've done enough for me, you should live for yourselves - take more time so you can find a safer way to get the data before you need it. I'll find another way, someone who's learned more magic than Cynthia, or just go with her to this 'Cecilia' who helped her," she pleaded.

Sylvie just shook her head with a gentle smile, one Nam mirrored as well. "It's alright, Anri," the pilot explained. "We did it. Nam found out where the disk with the design data is, all we have to do is go and get it, and we'll all finally be able to live entirely by our own power."

Seeing Nam's confirming nod, Anri's eyes widened, and her serious frown turned into a joyous grin.

Katherine Madigan had been quite surprised to awaken in a hospital bed, more so to discover both legs and an arm in casts, with a matching deep ache in the ribs on the right side of her chest, and an amazingly uncomfortable feeling in more private areas. She looked around the room in confusion, only partly reassured by the buma guard standing watchfully by the window, since it wasn't her usual one. Collecting her wits, she found the call button thoughtfully clipped to the left rail of the bed, where her good arm could reach it, and summoned a nurse in hopes of getting the situation explained.

Soon enough, a nurse arrived to do the usual vitals checks and remove the plumbing arrangements in favor of a bedpan, but before the lavender haired executive - and that had taken so long to grow out, too! Now it barely reached her shoulders! - could ask for any details, the monitor screen built into the wall activated, revealing the familiar face of Chairman Quincy. Pulling herself painfully upright, Madigan forced her slightly fuzzy thoughts into order, snapping out a respectful greeting.

The Chairman looked down from the wall contemplatively for a moment before speaking. "You have awakened," he said, secure in the knowledge that no one was going to call him on redundancy. "It has been several days. What do you recall of the attack?"

*I was attacked?* she wondered, stunned by the sheer audacity of such an act. Shaking her head, she replied, "Not a thinng, sirr. The last I can recall, I was rriding in one of the company carrs, and everythin' was fine."

Quincy hummed and frowned slightly, but told her, "The signals from your driver and bodyguard were disrupted as soon as it began, and their recorders destroyed; at this time there is little further information with any degree of credibility. If your memory returns, report it to me immediately. Also, you will insure you have a competent second in place in the event you are injured in the future. Kuroma is to be terminated with prejudice as soon as you resume your duties. I can only assume that he performed more adequately under supervision." His gaze shifted to the nurse, then, standing respectfully beside the bed. "Miss Madigan is to receive the best and most expedient care, as I dislike dealing with sycophantic incompetents. Inform the staff of as much."

Cynthia had awakened when they tried to move the girl onto her futon, and insisted on using her healing magic - actually just an energy aura, she'd told them, not a proper spell; it just gave their own bodies the power to heal themselves - on Nam and Anri since everyone was there and calmed down. Once she'd gone back to sleep, the runaways decided to go for the data now, before there was a chance it might be moved, and while the girl's healing effect was still recent enough to give a mild degree of regeneration if they were injured in the attempt. Then too, they'd never done two raids in the same night before, and only once two on consecutive nights, so no one should be expecting them to move so quickly. Anri would stay at the apartment as usual to watch over Cynthia, while Sylvie went after the disk and Nam hacked into the security system to look out for patrolling buma, since she'd be fast enough to intercept them or escape where Sylvie would have much more difficulty.

The only human the monitors had shown in the area they needed to access was Flint, the division manager, reading files with a desk lamp in his darkened office. When Sylvie arrived, though, the room was empty, and Nam confirmed over the intercom that he'd just vanished as she opened the door. "Someone must be onto us, feeding the system false data," she worried. "What do we do, Sylvie?"

"We can't turn back now," the other sexaroid replied. "Especially if they know we're here. We can't let them move the disk, or destroy it... There's nothing to do but hurry forward."

Fortunately, the storage room they needed was just down the hall, and it was only a few, tense minutes later that her search paid off, the small disk stuffed into her cleavage as she left, since the motorcycle suit's pockets weren't the greatest. "What's the situation?" she asked tensely, knowing Nam was keeping the intercom open as she moved through the corridors. She was almost out, now, on only the second floor.

"I still don't see any more signs that someone knows we're here, but there's a patrol coming your way... Oh no, there's no way to avoid them! I'll intercept them."

"What? No Nam, wait! Nam?" There was no reply, and a few seconds later she heard the high pitched screech of the medic's sonic blasters, followed by the crash of something slamming into a wall. "Now we've done it," she groaned, running for the end of the hall. Sure enough, intruder alarms began wailing, and she grabbed Nam's arm and ran back the other way, remembering a bay window that had been in sight of where they'd left the bikes.

That was quickly disposed of with another sonic blast, their tougher than human frames absorbing the impact of dropping from the second floor without difficulty, and the pair of them peeled out just as a handful of buma, their human disguises already shed, crashed out through the front doors of the GPCC building to give chase.

As they vanished on trails of thruster fire, Magnus Largo stepped out of the shadowed lobby, a satisfied smirk on his handsome face, golden eyes glittering coldly.

*Someone who only saw his usual grumpy attitude might have been surprised at the Chief back there,* Leon thought, *but he's always there in a pinch, backing up us poor field officers 100%. Heh, I think he forgot I'd been assigned this baby, he was sure surprised when I agreed to his order not to go looking for trouble in a patrol heli.* He twisted the throttle open a little more, expertly maneuvering the PMB through the sparse 2 AM traffic on Highway 5. Getting the unfamiliar body armor on and adjusted had been a bit of a challenge, and he was definitely going to recommend adding a bit more padding to the knee guards, but it handled like a dream, even with a pair of heavy K-11 carbines mounted on the back instead of the usual saddlebags, where they'd be like pistols in hip-holsters to the battleframe mode. He'd been tempted to bring his StoMACH, but it didn't have the right kind of mounting lugs, and the grip would be too small for the PMB's hands.

A flash caught his eye in the rear view mirror, distracting him just as the turn off to avoid the Kanto Canyon quake damage zone came up. He bit off a curse and slowed, but more flashes and the rumble of distant explosions washed away any other complaints. With a silent prayer that everything would line up the way it had when he'd tested it in the mecha bay, he hit the jump boosters and thumbed the transformation switch.

There was a jolt as tiny jets threw the cycle into the air, then the saddle fell away beneath him and he was clinging to the handlebars as the body of the big racing-style cycle unfolded into arms and legs behind his back, the front wheel splitting into twin lift fans at the shoulder blades while the back wheel folded up into a backpack. Then he heard the solid thunks as his armored back slapped into the chest hollow of the battleframe and the latches locked. The nose and windscreen folded up against his own chest as he dropped his arms to the control handles on the battloid's inner forearms, while the soles of his boots latched into the pegs on the robot's calves. His helmet HUD stabilized again and everything was - thankfully! - nominal as he spun the hovering mecha to face a rapidly approaching firefight, drawing his carbines like a gunfighter in one of those American movies.

A feeling of deja vu hit him as he saw that it was 55-C buma chasing women on motorcycles, but it wasn't Priss this time, at least. They were weaving around too much to give him a clear shot at the pursuing mechanoids, but he couldn't blame them for that, with how freely the buma were tossing blasts around from their mouth lasers. His eyes widened as the second, in yellow and blue leathers on a gold bike, suddenly flipped up to stand on the still moving cycle, one foot hooked on the throttle side of the yoke as she faced back down the road, leaning into the wind. "Impossible!" he mouthed, even as some kind of energy bolts reached out from the woman's shoulders and swatted one of the combat buma out of the air to tumble and crash into a building. "No one can do that, even a buma!" A twitch of her foot and twist of her torso in the slipstream sent her bike back and forth across the highway, dodging two more bolts before returning fire again, though less successfully.

They blew past him then, and Leon pushed the PMB's flight engines to their limit to match speeds, using double bursts in their thrusters to wax two more of the 55s, cutting them down to three as - *The canyons!*

The girls on their bikes had ridden right over the edge where the highway had collapsed, and hadn't seemed surprised to do it. The buma of course - were they all buma, on both sides? - the pursuers had of course just followed them down on their flight systems, and he did likewise, holding his fire since the bikers had vanished into the darkness below.

Remembering the shoulder mounted searchlight, he flicked it on, then activated the bullhorn on the other side. "This is the ADPolice!" he announced, commanding, "Shut down your weapon systems and lie face down, or -"

In the illuminated circle on the canyon floor, a pile of scrap was shaking as something freed itself from underneath, while a yellow streak circled one of the buma then turned into the daredevil biker as she slammed a flying kick into it and tossed it to crash through a wall. One of the remaining pair picked up the wrecked blue cycle and threw it at the momentarily stationary target, but she blurred away again before it hit.

Meanwhile, a big red shape, recognizable from the data Daley had sent as the DD's quadruped form, had freed itself from the scrap it was hidden in and a quad-barrel gun blew the head off the buma that had thrown the motorcycle. The one remaining roared and opened its heat projector array, but just as it fired the speedster appeared again, her shoulder beams shattering the lenses, the unfocused energy immolating it in a spectacular fireball.

Touching down at the third point of a triangle from the DD and the woman in blue and yellow, he called out, "This is Inspector McNichol, of the A. D. Police. I say again, shut down your weapon systems. I'm not going to attack you, just come out of there!"

There was a rumble behind him, and a roar, and he spun aside just in time for the combat buma that had been kicked through a wall to miss with its mouth laser as he dodged into the air.

Firing line clear, the DD launched a pair of small missiles at the buma, but it jetted away at the last moment as well. It landed on a ledge and tried to set itself for another shot, but the lavender-haired speedster blurred away again, running straight up the wall to its side and launching it to tumble back to the earth with a mighty uppercut. Even as it landed, the DD pounced, crushing the cyberdroid's torso and severing its spine with a taloned foreleg, and they were back at the stand-off.

"We can't let you stop us, Inspector," Nam called out pleadingly. "Not now, after everything we've come through. Please, we haven't killed anyone, or even really hurt them. Just turn away, and we'll be gone."

"That's something I can't do," he countered. "That thing is a menace to the entire city and everyone in it, and that's not even mentioning theft of government property, private and public damages, and weapons violations." His two carbines weren't exactly aimed at the pair, but they were clearly trained in their general directions as he landed again. "Backup is already on its way, even if you get past me you can't escape. You're right, you haven't killed anyone yet - if you come quietly you probably won't even be dismantled."

"NO! THAT'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH!" Sylvie shouted, then jerked in shock as the battlemover lurched under her. "What the!" The cockpit lights turned red and the instruments went crazy, as electricity played over the outside of the mecha and it began to change into the J-1 controlled humanoid mode. "No, why! The J-1 shouldn't be activating unless the pilot is dead, and I'm not even hurt..."

The cockpit around her seemed to melt and shift, slim armor plates like fins or blades forming a control frame around her, while liquid-like metal flowed over her and around the biker leathers. The link system collar, arm and leg bands snapped into place, and a wash of energy played over Sylvie's form, flaring her hair like a corona as the DD and whatever had taken it over synchronized with her OS.

Outside, the heavy armor of the DD broke up and reformed in ways that were very disturbing to Priss and Sylia, watching from the rim of the canyon above, but even more so for Nene, who had seen the form the weird robot "Guardian 215" had taken on the top of Genom Tower when it replaced Priss's motoslave. It still mimicked the over all shape of the DD, but the jutting fins, and most tellingly the close-packed array of blades on the forearms were the same. A little ball of fear started to grow in her stomach at the thought that they'd come to disable or destroy the DD, whatever the cost, when they'd have to fight against THAT.

(N.B.: If desired, start playing "Shock the Monkey" now)

Linna wasn't even looking at the battlemover. The spotty cloud cover had cleared again, and somehow, the full moon overhead was irresistibly fascinating, even as her heart beat pounded in her head and the body armor Sylia had built to mount her familiar weapon systems seemed to shrink and squeeze uncomfortably. The other Sabers turned to stare as the sounds of shattering ceramic and tearing nanoweave came form her, looking on in shock as their team mate tore out of the suit, face warping and extending into a baboon like muzzle, dark fur coating her body as the now loose long tail lashed uncontrollably. The giant's eyes glowed with an ominous red light as it continued to expand, a spiky, pitch black mane of hair the only thing still recognizable from their friend.

Rising on the skyline and easily four times larger than the DD itself, oozaru-Linna roared and beat her fists together with a crash like thunder. She looked down at last, sighting her enemy, then drew a deep breath and let loose with a tight, twisting blast of ki-fueled flames, exploding at the impact point like a bomb as the three below hastily dodged.

In the meantime, unseen by anyone, a small, stealthy form that had been trailing Priss for nearly two months even inside the new headquarters, and which had interfaced with a similar component it found there, slipped off to rejoin its master unit.

The initial contact was terrifying, like being washed away in a flood as the foreign system downloaded her entire archived memory, even as the part of the composite that was the J-1 battle computer evaded the fire attack and calculated threats and targeting points for the unknown new opponent. As the part that was Sylvie regained a sense of individual identity, outrage at the intrusion turned to shock as the stealth remote unit also rejoined the composite, and its findings were laid open before her - including the backed up mission-critical files retrieved from another remote that had been encountered in the Knight Sabers' base. Priss was a Knight Saber, Linna and Nene as well! And the Guardian, an actual alien artefact, that had somehow mistaken Priss for the user it had been intended for... Perhaps the ultimate slave, it held incredible power but had no desire for self-determination, and what little decision making capacity it had was damaged almost beyond recovery in the last battle with Priss, who simply didn't seem to understand. Even some of Priss's own memories were included in the data, copied from her lover's mind in an earlier attempt to recover from data loss, and to understand the troublesome person the Guardian had bound itself to.

Now, the part that was the Royal Guardian needed to be a true whole once more, and it would be up to her to integrate the muddle of directives and memories from a handful of sources, as the only general-purpose heuristic logic system in the composite... The part that was Sylvie felt a stab of terror, at the thought that she could really make a mess of things if a being with the Guardian's power ended up running wild, like the J-1's 'kill everything and blow up the bodies' program. Even now, it was bringing out all the extra armor and modules the Guardian had been able to recover or reconstruct while scavenging the quake canyon, and she had to countermand the assembly of half a dozen different weapons that would have done untold amounts of collateral damage... And she had to work quickly, because one thing the J-1 retained total control of was the self-destruct bomb.

The remaining Knight Sabers had scattered as well, to avoid being trampled more than anything, and Nene came to perch on top of a section of the highway that had landed on its side on the canyon floor just as the speed demon in yellow came to a stop there as well. Not having gotten a good look before, another shock piled onto this night of doozies as she recognized Nam, the new girl-friend she'd spent most of the day shopping with, looking at motorcycles, and she blurted out, "Eeeh? Nam! But if you're here, is Sylvie...?"

Nam was equally surprised to be recognized, but before she could say anything - with the build under that somewhat minimal armor, it could only be Nene in the new Pink Saber suit - they had to dodge away again. The DD had charged the oozaru, a pair of massive, sharpened fins extended from the forearms like the wolvers popular with cybergangs, only to be met with a back-hand smash that sent it flying, straight through the crumbling concrete of their road fragment.

Leon had ended up sharing a perch with the White Saber, though more by design - he'd intentionally headed for her, so as to pass on his critical information. "Listen," he warned her, "The DD - we've got to destroy it quickly! I don't know what's happened to it, but once the J-1 takes control, it'll self destruct when it runs out of power. We'll be blown to pieces, along with the entire city!"

"What? Nene, deep scan the DD, now!" Sylia ordered, over the scrambled radio link.

Nam, who'd ended up close enough to hear the tail end of Leon's warning, gasped as well. "That strong!" she cried. "She only said it would be dangerous, not... apocalyptic!"

Deploying her backpack sensors, the pink Saber quickly confirmed, "It's true! It's got a micro neutron bomb, and it's only 180 seconds from critical mass!" She'd forgotten to switch over to the speakers in her haste, but the nod of her helmet was enough to convey the worst to Nam.

Message delivered, Leon double-teamed the DD with Saber Blue who had come to the party in similar play clothes, the slightly more massive Typhoon still showing the obvious design similarities of the two mecha. Unfortunately, their shots simply ricocheted off the reinforced battlemover's armor, and it fired the last of its conventional missiles to drive them back before taking to the air. The powerful thrusters of the airborne battlemover had been augmented with the Guardian's advanced gravity control, making it faster and more maneuverable than ever, and it put that agility to good use, dodging more fire attacks from the giant ape. The missed shots blasted a trail of destruction, chewing a huge new divot out of the battered side of the Kanto Canyon, then wiping away a half dozen nearby blocks as she tried to hit the rapidly moving target.

The DD deployed the four-vaned energy cannon assembly that had replaced its gatling, charging and firing a sun-bright river of energy that caught the oozaru in the chest and knocked her tumbling head over heels through several more buildings, to land in a heap near the bay.

Howling her fury to the stars, were-Linna kipupped back to her feet, grabbing a radio mast from the wreckage and flinging it like a javelin at the battlemover, knocking it out of the air as it tried to set up another shot while everyone else rushed to catch up to its location.

As Sylvie had reintegrated the fragmented programming and files of the Royal Guardian's decision matrix, she'd found so much of the original data had been lost, now replaced by patterns copied from her and Priss's memories, that the part that was the Guardian was becoming more and more human until finally it too awakened to a sense of existence as an individual. Checking on the J-1, she realized how short time had gotten, and sent the new consciousness - and somehow that new beginning was a comfort in the face of immanent death - the sorrowful thought, *I've done what I can, the rest will have to be up to you to figure out, masah mahnyee 215, no, Masamune Niichigo. Whatever you decide to do, go for it with everything, ne?*

Nam reached the DD first, of course, Priss and Leon next in their flying battleframes, then Nene and Sylia. Leon, one side of his PMB scorched black by the exploding missiles, went straight to the attack again, putting the entire mass of the unit into a go-for-broke haymaker. The J-1 was still too quick, catching the punch and flipping him into the wall of an already damaged building, burying him in rubble as it collapsed further.

The others formed a semicircle around the red and grey battlemover, tensed but not yet committed to any attacks, when suddenly the extra fins and armor plates flowed away and vanished from the DD's frame, even most of the original armor and systems gone now as well where the Guardian's technology had replaced them. With a clunk and a hiss, the cockpit hatch opened, revealing Sylvie in her blue cycling jumpsuit, interface shackles still locked in place but the rest of the cockpit gutted, even the seat reduced to a bare frame. "Priss," she called out to Saber Blue. "I know it's you, Priss. Please, you have to kill me. The J-1 is linked to me, so that will shut it down - it's the only way. Hurry!"

Taken aback, the singer could only gasp, "Sylvie! Why... Why do you have to die? Can't you just turn the damn thing off!"

Amber eyes shimmering with tears, the sexaroid pled, "Please, it's completely out of control now. If you leave it, or even if another network connects to it, it'll destroy the whole city."

"I... No, I can't!" Priss cried, shaking gun arm extended, seemingly against her will. Nam, equally horrified, staggered back to lean against a flipped car, while Sylia and Nene called out to their team mate. The stubby firing stud inside her weapon gauntlet suddenly felt as huge and heavy as the world itself, and with terrible slowness her finger slid against it, pressing it right to the limit before the contacts would click over and launch a rail gun spike. *What am I doing? What CAN I do? I... I can't just...* too quietly even for the helmet microphone to pick up, she breathed, "Forgive me, I -"

Before she could cross that edge or back away from it, oozaru-Linna reoriented herself and bounded across the devastated cityscape to attack. Spotting the foolish weakness at her enemy's heart, she snapped a hand forward, and with the heavy damage done by the Guardian's removal the battlemover's lurching dodge was no longer anywhere near fast enough. With a horrid crunch and the snapping of reinforced cables, her massive hand wrapped around Sylvie and ripped her out of the cockpit, uncaring of the damage inflicted in her rage as the sexaroid all but vanished in her massive fist then was tossed carelessly aside.

Scrambled by the sudden hole in its control network, the J-1 had already begun shutting down before the giant monkey's fists slammed into it one after the other, hammering the battlemover into the earth before loosing a final blast of fire breath, instantly slagging what little of the mecha was not vaporized outright. A massive crater was blasted out around her feet by the secondary explosion even as the were-ape bellowed her victory.

Outraged, Nam zipped through the flaming rubble to slam stinging punches and kicks all over the giant as she ran up and down its body, adjusting her position in the slipstream to keep her feet pressed against it for traction. "HOW COULD YOU!" she howled, "SHE WAS MY FRIEND!" Tiring, she had to slow, and clung to the beast's fur, a mistake it quickly capitalized on to slap her away, coincidentally landing close to where Priss had shed her helmet to cradle Sylvie's broken body against her chest.

"Sylvie... I can't believe it was you..." the chestnut-topped Saber sobbed, wiping ineffectually at the blood welling from where the interface collar had dug into her neck before the cables tore free.

The sexaroids voice was a pain-filled rattle, and she coughed up a mouthful of blood before scrabbling at the data disk and croaking out, "Priss, take this... there's another girl, Anri, at my apartment, give it to her and Nam. It's why we fought, with this they can finally be free, like you... I beg you..."

"Sylvie..." her lover sobbed again, brushing back blood-matted black hair from the buma's face. "Sylvie? Answer me..."

Eyelids drooping, the dying woman forced out just a few more words. "Priss... just one... more... be kind to 'r... child..." Her energy was spent, then, and all that was left was the floating feeling of shock, and a deep dissatisfaction at dying in this manner.

"Child? I don't understand... Sylvie? SYLVIE!" Unanswered, the singer could only cry over the body of her love, Nam crawling over to join in her grief as cumulative damage from using her speed for so long left her shaking and weak with blood poisoning.

Rid of the climbing pest, oozaru-Linna turned to the only other fighters still standing, roaring a challenge into the night, even as the sirens of emergency vehicles and helicopter rotors sounded in the distance. Seeing no recognition in those bloodshot eyes, Sylia and Nene stood wary, ready to dodge if necessary. Taking their aggressive stances as defiance, she attacked, leaping into the air to drop on her erstwhile friends in a massive stomp that shook the earth as she landed, making more of the ruins collapse and forcing the two active Sabers to dodge and dodge again.

Despair tightening her chest, Sylia commanded, "We've got to try to lead her back into the canyon, away from the inhabited city. Priss is in no condition for this now, so it's up to us, Nene." Warily, she turned the powerplant in her own pack up to full output - while this one had at least not exploded when she lit off the fusion reaction, she was still less certain of the design than she'd like - and increased the draw to her personal energy supply to match. A pale glow shimmered into being around her body as it was stockpiled, and with a mental nudge it became a form-fitting energy shield that would cushion impacts and enhance her own speed and force.

Nene too raised her energy level, the battle aura she'd learned to bring out through training with her parents serving much the same purpose as Sylia's technologically generated shield. In fact, according to her mother's sensing spells, they were even formed from similar energy in essentially the same way, science catching up with ancient magic at last thanks to the theories of James Christian Dykstra as applied by Stingray genius. Concentrating on more immediate matters, she suggested, "I'll hit high, you hit her low?" "Agreed. Try not to do too much damage, we still don't know why she transformed, or how long it will last," the Saber leader replied.

"Somehow, I don't think that'll be a problem," the redhead muttered, before pulling open a portal in the air so she could travel to the top of a still-intact building near the oozaru's head.

The maneuver went as planned, the combined attack from opposite directions taking the giant at the ankles and shoulder blades, knocking her sprawling in the shattered street. Bellowing with anger, the huge ape chased the troublesome bugs back to the quake zone, crouching on the edge to look down, trying to spot where they'd run to.

The edge itself was blasted away by a pair of energy balls, one ki-based and the other a packet of plasma in a gravatic envelope, and the giant tumbled into the gorge with a squawk which became a pained roar as her shoulder was gouged by steel beams jutting from a fallen building. Maddened, she flailed at the offending wall, crumbling it to chunks as the clouds swept in again and a heavy rain began to fall.

Deprived of moonlight, the transformation reversed, rubble half-burying the still struggling oozaru as it shrank, snout reverting to a more human mouth and nose, fur fading away to leave a seemingly human body though one only slightly scraped and bruised by the concrete where a normal person would be crushed to a pulp. Working quickly to leave before investigators arrived, Sylia and Nene dug their friend out of the debris and hurried away into the night, radioing instructions to Priss to do the same.

If the sarcastic applause and compliments for putting on such an amusing show that sounded only in her mind gave the silver-haired scion of Wayne and Stingray pause, she betrayed no sign.

* * *

><p>Next time on Bubblegum Disaster: There's a whole lot of pieces to be picked up...<p>

* * *

><p>Yamane-sensei and the "70% cut-off" law - this line wasn't intended to be a pun, and she is certainly dead serious about it at the moment, but... I come from a medical family, and I know the kind of gallows humor doctors tend to have, and I'm absolutely certain that the phrase would be ingrained enough among members of the medical community that it would come out automatically.<p>

Choji and Shika (Shikamaru) are ninja in the Naruto manga and anime written by Masahi Kishimoto. Shikamaru is a strategist as a teen, while Chouji is more of a meat tank who follows his lead. As cops in a more modern world, Chouji developed his observation and analytical skills after his friend died in the 2027 Kanto quake. Their third team mate, Ino, is as yet unused, but I'm sure she'll be barging into my thoughts soon enough to demand a role.

Jane Li and Jade Chan - Jane is Jet Li's actual daughter's name, and Jade was Jackie's niece in the Jackie Chan Adventures cartoon.

PMBs vs. MOSPEADA: While basic concept of a quick, agile motorcycle with armor for the rider which can transform and link to that armor to become a combat exoskeleton is amazingly cool in theory, the design used in Genesis Climber MOSPEADA falls short on several counts. The most significant design stupidity in the MOSPEADA cycle is that except for a pair of non-load-bearing thigh guards the ENTIRE motorcycle wraps around the rider's upper body, and I don't know about you, but I damn sure can't hold up the weight of a motorbike, let alone run, jump, and fight while carrying it; if I could then I wouldn't want to because the unpowered body armor would be less noticeable and restrict my movement that much less. A motoslave is a complete, autonomous robot which has a hollow interior to accept a pilot, who operates the limbs in much the same way as the waldo controls of a normal K-series battle frame. Further, the MOSPEADA is blocky and falls in that range where it's too ugly to be cool, but not ugly enough that no one dares to say so to its face. In contrast, the Police Motor Battloid shares the sleekness of its Knight Saber cousins, with a few variations - it's essentially the 'production model' shown in the BGC:EX RPG sourcebook, but with the hover fans and the ability to accept a pilot in battle frame mode restored. I've added a modified scan of this also, for those who don't have BGC:EX.

If you have a copy of Mekton Zeta, there's a picture of Kenty the mechatech on page 29. She also has a sidebar quote in MZ Plus, page 6. She's something of a stock character to populate a mecha bay in gearhead circles but I rounded her out a bit (in a literal sense if you consider her impending parenthood!) for this.

Paul Bergman came up with the line I gave to Dick Grayson about getting the Batmobile wrecked - thanks, PMB! And no, I didn't actually name the police motoslave after you, there may not be any such thing as "coincidence" but it wasn't me who plotted that twist.

On the classifications of humanoid combat suits - "body armor" is unpowered, though it may have computer or support systems built in, "hardsuits" are only slightly larger and generally lump in with "power armor" like the one used by Mason in canon BGC, they have some form of motive system that at least compensates for their own weight. The K-12 Armored Trooper, motoslave, and PMB are "battleframes" - significantly larger than human but the pilot's arms and legs are still at least partially inside the limbs. "Battlemovers" are big enough to have a cockpit where the pilot is entirely within the torso. I expect this all was fairly obvious from context, but just in case, here you go.

"Wait, so what happened to Flint?" It seems our dear Mr. Flint went on a snark hunt, but found a boojum instead. If you don't know what that means, and can't figure it out, read more Lewis Carroll. I've actually been more clear about what became of him than canon, if you watch the episode in question.

"Niichigo", while directly representing "ni" "ichi" and "go", 2, 1, and 5, is written as a name ni+ichigo, "two strawberries." "Masamune" being only similar in sound to "ma-sah mahn-yee," "royal guardian" in the unknown alien language of its creators, is spelled like the famous swordsmith.

"I am damn dissatisfied to be killed in this manner!" I don't remember what movie it was, but a bad guy in a poorly dubbed martial arts movie had this for a last line, and it always stuck with me. Basically it's just me being vague about whether Sylvie has enough of a sense of unfinished business to become a ghost.

"Ano, Niichigo doko wa?" - Doko kashira, kashira kashira...

Guardian 215 should be imagined with the vocal talents of Susan Blu; if you don't know her by name, she did (among other shows) Arcee on the post-movie Transformers episodes, as well as in the movie itself. You can even keep the flanging effect if you like, though it's not really there.

Many thanks to my prereaders: Hoderi Hibiki, Paul Bergman, Nathan Baxter, Hide Hasegawa, Leong Mun Yee, Andrew Wilson, Christopher Gilbert, and Drakensis, and to everyone on the BDPreread mailing list - you get your name listed if you actually make commentary, but just reading and finding nothing bad enough to complain about is still commentary of a sort.

Drakensis used to keep a remote archive of the story on his web site, but unfortunately it no longer exists. Since he's a damn good fic writer himself, I'll give a link to his profile instead, as a thank you for the effort when he did. It's at .net/u/347490/drakensis

Special thanks to Bob Schroeck, Consulting Acronymologist. He also happens to be the author of another rather good BGC fanfic called _Drunkard's Walk II_ (The first one is not available for public consumption, but it's a rather modular series.) The Drunkard's Walk home page is .net/~ and Bob's message board is at .com/

Sgt. Fuko MacNamara and her art are also Bob's property, from _Drunkards Walk II_ in fact.

Bubblegum Crisis belongs to Youmex and Animeigo, I make no claims otherwise. Please don't sue me, I have no money to speak of and fanfic does more to promote your products than anything else I know of - without it, I never would have known about anime at all, and I'd certainly never have bought the BGC tapes based on the sucky box copy.

Ranma 1/2 I'm not so sure of, except that the creator was Rumiko Takahashi, not me, and that I make no claims to own IT either. I THINK that the Ranma manga are done by Viz in the US, but that may be incorrect.

The Bionic Six is similarly of unknown provenance, but I have a very vague and unreliable memory that it may have been animated by Suncoast video... In any case, it's STILL not my own creation.

_Dykstra's War_ is by Jeffery D Kooistra, published by Baen Books.

Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z were created by Akira Toriyama, owned overall by Bandai I think, and released on video in the US by FUNimation and in manga by Dark Horse (again not so sure about that one - could be Viz)

Sailor Moon was created by Naoko Takeuchi, and is undoubtedly also owned by some animation studio or another. I know that the RPG rights in North America at least belong to Guardians of Order.

_Shock The Monkey_ was originally by Peter Gabriel, but was more recently covered by Ozzy and Coal Chamber.

OMAKE!

As the giant ape appeared on the city skyline, the Chairman's eyes widened slightly from where he looked out of his office's huge klasterglass windows. Schooling his face into its usual imperturbable expression, Quincy turned back to his desk and keyed in a short combination. Immediately, Misato appeared on the viewscreen.

"Sirr?" she saluted.

"Prepare Unit 01 for launch," he commanded gruffly.

"But the pilot -"

"A spare has arrived."

"Aye sirr!"

Deep in the subterranean levels of the Tower, a massive, purple and green cyberdroid began to stir into a semblance of life.

Yeah yeah, so Madigan has purple hair, not blue. Bite me, I'm delicious.

EOF


	11. Chapter 5 EX

09_BD_WOASS_Ch_05_EX

2010-10-30 - moved ADP Second Division to Yokohama, annotations edit  
>2009-11-25 - credits fix<br>2009-11-22 - egregious missing word fix that I'm both furious and ashamed to have missed for so long, since it reverses the meaning of a paragraph.  
>2008-08-13 - more comma stomping and improved word choices<br>2007-06-11 - continuity edit and comma stomping  
>2007-06-08 - finished first draft(!) This is more writing than I've done at a whack in a year or more<br>2007-06-07 - finished Leon's report, much note/planning adjustment, added ghost scene because the newsfax was too short  
>2007-06-06 - finished fashionable heroine<br>2007-06-05 - finished sleepover/shower, working on fashionable heroine incident  
>2007-06-04 - finished Nenemom sex talk  
>2:20 AM 620/2003 - preliminary notes

Dead... She'd died, and so CLOSE to winning freedom for all of them! It was so very frustrating, she could scream if she'd had any breath left. The timeless, drifting feeling changed somehow, and she opened her eyes to find herself in a swirling mist, faint shapes visible through it... Concentrating, they became clearer, almost as if she was there again, and she saw that she'd moved from where she'd died... She wasn't the only one, and it was still going on. She could see it as if a double image formed, a more solid version of the ghostly victims joining her ever so briefly in the mist, then whisking away, and she wondered why she had not.

There was a sudden scream, and she spun in surprise. It was hard to tell with the blank, black sky and shifting mist, but there was something just as dark moving not far away, mainly visible in how it blocked the sight of the thrashing, screaming man she'd heard. Should she help? Could she help? Was there anything she could use as a weapon?

There was a weight in her hand, even though she knew it had been empty just a moment ago. She looked down, only to find herself holding a softly glowing, crystalline sword. *Well that's really weird,* she thought, *I've never even seen a sword in person before...* It felt right in her hands, though, as she took a few hesitant swings.

*Sometimes, you just have to go with it and see what Fate has in the shop,* she decided with a shrug, then set herself and charged at the... thing. It was black and sprouted too many teeth, claws, and tentacles for comfort, and from the tearing sounds and the way the screaming had stopped it was probably too late for the guy it had attacked, but at least she could keep it from finding anyone else. After that... Well, maybe she could keep an eye on her friends, if she was some kind of ghost now.

FASHIONABLE HERO? Mystery Woman Ends Buma Rampage!  
>By Ara Dokoda<p>

Three security-type buma attacked Highway Six on Thursday evening, disrupting rush hour traffic and bringing that section of the city to a standstill, but miraculously causing no loss of life. A pair of Genom guard buma in a company car were near the origin of the incident and battled heroically to protect nearby humans, but further investigation has revealed a third party involved in the battle.

Just as the bodyguard units were being overwhelmed, dressed in the hottest fashion page styles, a heroine appeared! Landing out of the sky without engines or an aerodyne, the mysterious figure's haute couture was recognized by fashion correspondent Ororo Nandeska who happened to be on the scene, a body glove and tabard straight off the Parisian catwalks.

No society flower this, however, to the amazement of motorists trapped by the disruption she quickly disposed of the attackers. Could this be the mysterious Bakemono Burglar, or perhaps a hero from some distant manga come to defend the Earth from him? Martial arts student Midori T. described-

The flimsy newsfax blew away as another group of fire and rescue vehicles roared by, sirens blaring, drawn from an outlying ward to help with the massive destruction in the city's heart.

Bewilderbeast Studios Present

BUBBLEGUM DISASTER

Season One

WISHES ON A SHOOTING STAR

A work of BGC fan fiction by ClassicDrogn

Chapter Five EX

Cover blown anyway, Priss carried Nam with her when she left, Sylvie's body cradled carefully in the motoslave's other arm. She'd flown to one of the warehouses Sylia owned, just long enough to get out of the hardsuit, lay her former lover out on an emergency cot, and turn the air conditioning all the way up, before continuing on to deliver the data disk, a deathly ill Nam clinging weakly behind her on the transformed motoslave. She'd helped the purple-eyed sexaroid up the stairs to the loft the buma shared, only to be bowled over as she opened the door by a bawling little blonde.

"Cynthia!" she exclaimed, "What are you doing here? Everyone was worried about you!" It was unlikely the former buma even heard, the only even partly distinguishable words, muffled further by the musician's shoulder, were her own name and Sylvie's.

Huddled on a futon near the television, Hotaru and Yuki snuggled in one arm and the other still extended where Cynthia had fled from her side, Anri sniffled and said, "Don't be angry with her, Asagiri-san, we talked her into it, to keep our secret."

"You don't know how much Sylvie wanted to tell you once she connected you and Cynthia's 'Priss-onee,' but she just couldn't, for our sake," Nam agreed. "If things hadn't gone out of control, she'd have been back with you by tomorrow and all of us would leave, far from anywhere they were looking for us." The speedster's voice burbled in her throat by the end of the explanation, and she coughed uncontrollably, spraying flecks of dark blood on her covering hand.

Tinkling voices raised in alarm, the two fae buma jumped down from Anri's arm, metallic wings unfolding to catch the fall and carry them to the doorway. They each grabbed one of her hands, tugging worriedly toward her own futon. Anri too stood and came to help the pallid, sweating sexaroid in and down to rest.

Wails fading at last, Cynthia pulled Priss inside as well, still tearful eyes and red cheeks turning to her in a shaky but still recognizable attempt at Sylvie's 'serious' expression. "I'm very sorry, Priss-onee, I tried to help Sylvie-nee, but... But she was too far awaaay!" Collapsing against her first friend's legs again, the small girl relapsed into tears. The chestnut haired Saber gathered her up in her arms and held her close.

Not having wanted to draw out the time between realizing how much fun motorcycles were and going shopping for one, Nene hadn't stopped in at her parents' Miribile home the night before - she'd kind of resolved to expand her time less yesterday evening, when she realized how much she was changing while her friends stayed the same living twenty four hours per day instead of a week's worth, but that had been the immediate deciding factor.

She'd spent much of the day looking at various new and customized models with Nam before settling on a Raven Custom, the same base model as the last two the Doctor had tricked out for Priss before her current bike, but with a newer tuning process that should make it a close rival for the scratch built job she had now - the one that had been used on Nam's own ride. For that matter, Dr. Raven was a much more skilled mechanic than the guy who'd set up the other girl's cycle, and would undoubtedly wrangle even better performance.

After the night they'd just had, though, she didn't know what to think of it all, so when Hiryuko stepped out of a portal as they laid the still unconscious Linna in an infirmary bed, her bruises already beginning to purple, Nene decided to bake two cakes in one oven and sat down for a talk with her mom.

Her friend came first of course, so she put speculation about the sexaroid and what she'd really wanted on hold to ask if there had been some connection between the dancer's terrifying transformation and the supernatural world her family was so intertwined with.

"Nothing we could find had any unusual mystical significance," the elder redhead replied, "and believe me, we looked. No spells, no demons, we even checked for the were-curse and shapechanger-type vampirism, nothing. Her spiritual signature didn't change so much as intensify." Seeing her daughter's quizzical look, Hiryuko explained further. "She accessed a buttload more ki, of course, but that was more of a secondary effect - it's as if she went into a trance and her most primal self was brought out, so deep that her rational mind was completely suppressed and she didn't even know you as her friends." Shaking her head, the older woman concluded, "Whatever it was, that giant transformation is part of her natural being, not something imposed from outside."

"But, wait," the pink Saber protested, "if it was just like going into a trance, could it have been intentional? Obviously it didn't quite work if it was, Linna wouldn't just fight indiscriminately like that, but it was pretty scary when the DD transformed the way Priss's Guardian thingie did. I mean, considering what it did to Mason, and all."

"I don't think so, and as for the DD, she wasn't even lookin' at it, Kireiko. As soon as the moon appeared from the clouds, it fascinated her," Hiryuko explained, using her daughter's birth name instead of the nickname she'd adopted to join the AD Police. "That was why we checked for werewolf and vampirism - werewolves transform under a full moon, and Mideon vampires can stand the sun, transform themselves, and are also influenced by the moon. Neither of those would explain having a tail, anyway - most likely, she's got some spirit ancestry herself, maybe Sun Wu Kung, the Monkey King - It was a long time ago now, but he did set up a kingdom here in the Mortal Realm, after the adventure that inspired the story of The Journey to the West."

"Maybe that's why it only happened after her tail showed up," the (still, if barely) youngest Saber guessed. "But then why didn't it happen when we were sparring, or at least when that soul eater attacked in Miribile?"

Her mother shrugged. "Dunno, maybe it takes some time, or only works at night, or it is the moon after all. Once she wakes up, why not ask, though I'd've thought she'd mention it by now, knowing about us."

Nene hummed thoughtfully, and decided to wait until they could talk to her friend about it. That left Nam, Sylvie, and their whole situation, and she explained meeting them, the cycle ride, and the day out she'd had with the sweet-tempered woman who had turned out to be one of the rogue sexaroids, and who was probably the Bakemono Bandit as well.

"I suppose it's only natural if she's totally hot and has a nice personality considering what she was made for," she recapped, "but I really had fun shopping with her today, and I think she did too. We were going to get together again after my shift tomorrow - today, I guess - but now I don't know how to feel about it. What do you think, Mom?"

The older redhead sniggered and sang, "Sounds like my Ne-ne-ko-chan has a cru-ush!"

A portal formed behind the incandescently blushing teen, and Tora Kagami stepped through just as she sputtered, "MOM! I do _not_ have a crush on her! I'm just not sure if she was really my friend or wanted something else, you know, the whole sexaroid thing!" He froze, pale as a ghost, except for a face blue with shock.

An evil glint in her eye, Hiryuko stated seriously, "It's all right, dear, this is the twenty first century after all. No matter what personal choices you make, we'll still love you and support you, ne anata?"

Sweat drops pouring down the back of his head, Tora made an inarticulate sort of "kack-kack" sound.

Realizing that he was behind her and what her last sentence probably sounded like, Nene eeped, her blush, impossibly, deepened, and she hunkered down as if trying to sink into the ground.

Grinning now, the devil in the shape of her mother continued, "Your friends will be all right with it too, they were fine with Priss dating Nam's friend Sylvie, after all. It's good to have the support of your friends, ne a-na-taaa?"

Eyes blank, her father gagged and stammered a few more times, them managed to squeak out, "O-of course, dear... I just remembered... something ... I need to do... somewhere. Right, seeya!" After a couple of tries, he managed to get another portal open, and fled into it posthaste.

The older woman collapsed back in her chair, cackling like a hyena. She was still rubbing her eyes and giggly by the time her daughter recovered enough to squeal, "I cannot BELIEVE you just did that! How am I ever going to look at Daddy again!"

Forcing down another fit, Hiryuko retorted, "Eh, 's good for 'im. Anyway, I assume you meant the Bakemono Burglar situation by 'the whole sexaroid thing?'"

"YES! That!" Nene snapped. "Not some ... some perverted innuendo, ero-mama!"

Finally having suppressed her mirth, the still young looking Kagami matron replied seriously. "I was just teasing, but I also meant it - it would be all right, even if it meant you'd have to adopt. Don't think you can get out of giving me grandchildren that easily, little missy."

"MOM!"

"Seriously, you're eighteen now, sweetie, and I'm glad you decided to wait, but isn't it about time you started dating?" Her mother leaned forward, and finished off her cooling cup of tea. "I think you should go ahead and give her a chance, and time will tell. There's no magic answer to making friends, even if you literally make them like a golem, or more importantly, a buma, the friends part is still up to you."

Once everything had settled down, Cynthia used her healing ability again on Nam. The sexaroid had visibly relaxed and regained color as the lambent blue-green glow of magic played around her, falling asleep at last as the worst of the damage was reversed. Cynthia was too exhausted herself to finish it entirely, but at least now it could safely keep until morning - even with her apparently limitless source of magical energy, the concentration to use it was wearing on the child.

"What will you do now?" Anri asked quietly, after disposing of the tissues she'd used to wipe Nam's forehead. She glanced over to the little blonde before returning Priss's serious look.

Still kneeling on the other side of the futon, sleepy child curled in her lap, the Saber frowned in thought, then replied, "I don't want to take her on my bike, especially this tired, better to just let her sleep as she's been here." Uncharacteristically hesitant, she bit her lips before continuing, "If it's not troublesome, I'll stay here with her. In the morning we can call for a car, and maybe see if Nam's bike is salvageable after crashing it into the quake zone and that fight. The Akimotos will be overjoyed to see her again, and Sy- uh, Cecilia can easily do whatever is involved with that data disk for you. Then, I don't know then. A funeral, I guess." Downcast, she muttered to herself, "Another funeral..."

"It's no trouble, but the only futon left is..." Anri trailed off, knowing Sylvie and Priss had shared a bed a few times in the past weeks but unsure how the singer would feel about it now that her partner had passed.

"I think that's probably the only way I'm gonna get to sleep at all tonight," the chestnut haired woman replied, giving the sexaroid a haunted look. Forcing a smile, she changed topics. "Is there a shower in this place, though? I'm kinda rank, after that fight."

There was, and as she washed Priss sang _Konya wa Hurricane_, about half tempo and double heart, to the ghost of memories. It was still a pain how the water kept getting in her eyes, but somehow it wasn't quite so totally devastating, at least until she was done and it was time to face that empty bed.

Though she couldn't quite make out the words, Anri too was comforted by the musician's low, gentle voice, lulled to a semi-doze where she lay, Cynthia curled into her side.

And finally, outside but heedless of the rain, a dark-haired figure listened with senses beyond the human. Its eyes flashed pale red as it turned back to the street watchfully.

Though she'd sent Mackie off to get some sleep, Sylia stayed at her unconscious subordinate's bedside, wondering if she'd ever manage to get back to a life where she felt a comfortable level of control. She'd be the first to admit she was far from perfect or all-knowing, but it had been nice when she could make a plan and have a reasonable chance of pulling it off without the interference of kami, demons, or were-kaiju. 'Sometimes the only thing to control is yourself, and let matters happen as they must;' it was all very well for Kami-sama to say it, but look where it had gotten him!

Shaking her head, she sighed and brushed a stubborn spike back from Linna's brow. The last time she'd seen the brunette in here - something all too frequent lately, she could have been competing with Priss - was only a week before, when a buma had tried to gut her without even the benefit of a hardsuit's protection. That had been the night she'd worn the date outfit Sylia had gotten for her, fortunately, and the bulletproof nanoweave had stopped the worst damage, but even her remarkably tough muscles and flesh had torn slightly at the impact point, and needed a few stitches to close. If it hadn't been for Sylia's own recent enhancements she might not have been able to get a needle through, and she'd broken three doing it. New, monofilament reinforced titanium needles were available now, but at least this time the dancer's wounds were limited to bruising and abrasions from the rubble that had all but buried her when she changed back from a giant ape... And if that wasn't the least effective reassurance the Saber leader had ever heard, she didn't know what was.

Linna had gone to meet her date that other night, a little late perhaps but not much. She hadn't counted on a traffic jam on the way into the city, though, and even more unexpected was the blast of an explosion somewhere up ahead where traffic was stopped. Seconds later the searing needle of a laser speared the police aerodyne flying in from the south, and she decided to investigate.

Thinking quickly, the Sabers' melee specialist pulled off a bandanna and tied it over her face, then eased her car into the break down lane - fortunately she'd been traveling next to it, and had left herself some space before the car ahead. Tripping the emergency beacon in her wristwatch and leaving the car's blinkers on, she stepped out onto the tarmac. Ignoring the gawking salaryman in the mid-life-crisismobile behind her, she gathered herself, crouched, and leapt up to the overhead light poles, bouncing from one to the next as she went to check things out.

Arriving, she quickly assessed the situation, still crouched on a nearby pole. The engine compartment of a slick black sedan had been crushed into the road by some massive impact, and a gout of smoke rose from the wrecked frame of a BU-55B security buma nearby, probably the source of the explosion earlier. A second security-type was being torn apart by three of its military cousins not far away, one holding each arm while the last twisted its head off from behind. On the ground where she'd fallen after being tossed into a second car, a whimpering woman in a ruined suit scrabbled blindly with one good arm, ineffectually trying to get away while blood gushed where bones had poked out of broken limbs.

Linna felt a hot ball of rage explode in her gut, sweeping away the last of her wariness like dust in the shockwave of a bomb at the sight of another buma assassination. Her battle aura flared to life, flickering to her awakened senses in the physical manifestation of her emotions, though the untrained would see a shimmer like a heat mirage at best. A metallic squeal marked an imprint forming in the aluminum lamp post as her hand clenched unconsciously, and then she was flying through the air, stylish white boots each slamming into a buma's head, just too late to save the beleaguered bodyguard.

Thrown off balance by her attack, the 55C that had ripped off its head staggered back while her other target was knocked off its feet, getting tangled in its victim's inert legs as it fell. The other attacker managed to stay clear only to fall under a relentless series of hammer-blows from fists and feet, armor cratering as a tiny burst of ki was released at each impact. It staggered back a step, two, then toppled as a Dragon Stomp shattered its left knee joint, all but snapping the leg right off with its force.

Crashing back to the road, the combat buma calculated, then braced its arms and sealed its optics to use the laser mounted in its mouth. The dim outline of the unexpected enemy extended an arm in a hopeless attempt to shield itself, and it felt a cruel satisfaction at turning the tables on such a powerful opponent - amazingly so, for a model with such a comprehensive human disguise. A glow of plasma formed in the outstretched palm, some kind of hidden weapon array, but the laser was already charged and the firing relay tripped just as the target cried out-

Linna released the ki blast with an explosive kiyai, a basic ball of superheated air compressed in a bubble of energy. It impacted just as the first glimmer of preignition light leaked out of the buma's mouth laser, blowing away the focussing array and the fat fiber optic lightpipe that came from the actual emitter, deep in the chest. Undirected, the laser blast vaporized the buma's own neck and head leaving the brunette Saber victorious but panting from exertion, regretting the energy expended even as the finishing attack landed.

She had to fight smarter. The impact bursts had been effective, if not as much as her hardsuit's knuckle bombers, but between them and the ill-advised fireball she'd used more than half of the energy boost gained by her spiking anger, and the other two buma were back on their feet, moving to set her up for a crossfire. The two-way pager watch had stopped buzzing on her wrist, so she knew at least that it had been noticed and backup was probably on its way, but one way or another this would almost certainly be over by the time anyone could arrive.

It was the difference between sparring and combat that had set her up for a problem - Hiryuko had told her time and again how inefficient a simple fireball was compared to beam style attacks, let alone advanced manipulations like the Kagami woman's Gamera Bombs or Tora's cold-ki techniques, but when she could always just jump back and call up more power it hadn't seemed like such a problem. Now, having leapt into battle fueled by unthinking anger and without properly powering up first then foolishly squandering the energy she did have with that same anger, Linna was at a disadvantage - the more so in fact for having taken one of the attackers out so quickly, as the remaining pair would be taking her seriously now. That was rarely the case with combat models, she'd found, unless they had a level of experience uncommon this far from the active sector of the Polar War. It was due to the pack-animal instincts instilled in them, and the far greater than human strength packed into their cybernetic bodies.

There was no time to contemplate abstracts, though, the 55C that had decapitated the bodyguard had taken the time to crush its skull before moving to deal with her but now it had set itself and opened the chest plates over its heat projector, probably expecting her to dodge away into the third's attack. That tactic might have worked if Linna wasn't aware of the weakness the array's focussing lenses presented, if someone was quick enough to take advantage.

That, the tailed woman certainly was. She formed a microburst just over the knuckles of her first and second fingers again and skipped in close, slamming it home and producing a shockwave of ki that crushed through the thinner, inner armor as well as spreading to shatter the lenses, damaging the buma's power supply. Fortunately it was not equipped with its own fusion core like the Superbuma, as some 55Cs had begun to be refitted with to allow unlimited use of their energy weapons, instead relying on a superconductor storage ring, but the liberated current was still enough to arc and energize enough plasma for a secondary explosion that ripped apart the unit's chest and pelted the vigilante with shrapnel. She blessed Sylia again for providing the bulletproof outfit.

Even with that protection she'd been a hair too slow this time, the skin of her face and upper body reddened from an instant's exposure to the weapon's effect, her left arm and fist blistering painfully under the tight-fitting body suit and glove.

Flinching back, she was blindsided by the last of the buma and then it was Linna's turn to go sprawling. Kicking off as she hit, the martial artist tucked into a roll and then sprang back to her feet. The buma had apparently learned from its fellows' fates, pressing a physical attack rather than trying to use its more exotic weapons. She changed styles, deflecting the attacks with gentle seeming circular moves that had all the inevitability of a river flowing to the sea, rather than the direct, power moves of the first stage of the fight. She wasn't as skilled in Tai Chi as Karate, but the defense it allowed was excellent, and its internal focus would allow raising her ki again without having to break contact and power up directly.

That wasn't to say she abandoned the attack entirely, of course - no defense can last forever and a buma wasn't going to tire before she would even if it did. Brushing its arms aside as the cyberdroid tried to capture her in a crushing bear hug, the brunette snapped up one leg, launching a kick that lifted the heavy combat machine off its feet. Pressing the attack in hopes of regaining the initiative Linna rechambered the leg and jumped after it, a second kick knocking the buma sideways to crash against the wrecked car, the Knight Saber catching herself with a crouched touchdown on the hood of another stopped vehicle and immediately kicking off again to keep up the pressure.

Staggered but not stunned the buma ripped the open car door out of its frame and threw it, making her dip into the Anything Goes aerial techniques to spin her body out of the way and push off from the flying debris, deflecting herself higher into the air. Linna came in from the higher angle with her hands curled like a stooping hawk's talons to dig into the enemy's shoulders at the collarbone, or in this case the analogous joint in the buma's armor.

Fingers reinforced by her own life energy dug into the seam in the armor and the buma roared in frustration and pain as Linna used her momentum to spin around their common center of mass and the pivot point of the car's roof and throw it again, this time crashing into the cement retaining wall on the side of the highway. Overstress indicators flared in its neural net warning of spinal damage at the small of its back where the edge of the wall had hit, and the combat buma wobbled on unsteady feet as it struggled to stand again.

Buoyed by the obvious signs of damage the martial artist hopped down from her landing place on the ever more damaged sedan and was unprepared for the seemingly punch-drunk enemy to counterattack, its arm spearing out with a clawed hand to gut her. Linna rolled with the attack as best she could but was still doubled over by pain and the sheer force, egg rolling somewhat clumsily away and clutching her abdomen. Fortunately the attack didn't seem to have penetrated but she could still feel the hot, slick sensation of flowing blood inside her body glove and knew she'd need to finish the fight quickly. Fortunately the buma had knocked itself off its own feet with the move, teetering precariously over the side of the elevated highway, a forty foot drop from the upper deck to the ground level street below.

Bracing itself against the wall with its arms, the mechanoid targeted the troublesome enemy that had appeared and started the charge cycle for its mouth laser, calculating that her reduced mobility and battle damage would prevent the kind of counters previously used against ranged attacks. *This will definitely be a combat log worth reviewing at the maintenance depot,* it mused in the seconds before the weapon was ready to fire, *preferably with a level three lubricant and wear replacement in progress and a cold nutrient shake.*

It fired but was unprepared for the speed Linna used to zigzag around the beam, her stomach burning as the stress tore the damaged tissues further but will unshaken as she moved in for the finishing blow, a ki-infused uppercut topped with another knuckle bomb which blew the 55C's head off before it could even open its optic shields.

Leaning over the mechanical corpse, arms braced against the cracked but still relatively whole retaining wall, the victorious Knight Saber breathed shallowly, trying to avoid further strain on her abused stomach. Gathering herself after a moment, she again pressed one hand against the wound before hopping carefully up onto the barrier and jogging back to where she'd left her car, since she could hear more aerodynes approaching. Hopefully it was far enough from the front of the traffic jam that no one would have connected her with anything out of the ordinary, or taken notice of her license plate number... If nothing else, she'd be able to use the cell phone in her purse when she got back to it, and get in touch with Sylia or Nene to have them do their computer hoodoo and remove any connections to her that a search for the number might turn up.

They'd done that, a different number being entered into the record systems as registered to Linna Yamazaki and the next day she'd reported her plate stolen, as sometimes happened when criminals or simple joyriders wanted to disguise a similarly colored car. A small administrative fee later and she had a third, legitimate new number and plates, and then it was all over but the healing - gratifyingly rapid - and the lectures from Sylia and Hiryuko, which were dishearteningly long.

Now her team mate, her friend was lying in that bed again, apparently in considerably better shape but presenting an even bigger mystery than how she'd suddenly grown - or perhaps regenerated, since she remembered having one as a child - an agile, furry, monkey-like tail in the wake of the Griffon incident. They'd been unable to find any documented incidence of a human with such a fully developed prehensile member, nor even any animal analogues of the large ductless gland that ran most of its length and which seemed to have a direct connection to the optic nerves of all things.

Feeling herself nodding off, Sylia shook her head, a few silver-blue locks bobbing where they'd slipped free of the bun she wore under her armor helmet. Every scan she could run said Linna was simply in a deep but normal sleep, and the circling swarm of unanswered questions would keep until morning at least... Maybe afternoon, with how late it had gotten and how exhausted she felt.

It was around mid-morning before Leon was dug out of the rubble, the PMB having lost power when the gas turbine in the rear wheel folded on its back was damaged. Even at that, he counted himself lucky - the sturdy mecha and body armor had prevented any major injuries, all he'd suffered were sprains and joint stress when falling wreckage of the wall he'd been tossed into battered him around like a rag doll. Despite his energetic protests the rescue workers still bundled him off to the mobile hospital that had been set up, but with all the serious injuries they had to deal with, he'd done nothing but wait and grumble in frustration since the triage medic determined he had a heart beat, normal body temperature, and no abnormal swelling or bleeding wounds, then handed him a granola bar and waved him at the steel chairs where those who weren't in immediate danger were waiting for someone to have time for a more detailed examination.

He'd tried to leave once, actually, but the THP motorcycle officer who was handling security wouldn't allow it - apparently this was a special area set up for people who'd been buried, and everyone had to have a detailed check for internal injuries before they could go. Neither Leon's higher rank nor the fact that he'd been buried in a mecha that kept anything from hitting his torso impressed the cycle cop, the Inspector was a patient who'd been buried, he would wait quietly and get checked out or they'd sedate him.

His relief was considerable, then, when Daley appeared, dirt-smeared and more rumpled than he'd ever seen his dapper partner, but with orders from way up the political totem pole to collect him and get a report. Though, he did wonder, "How'd you get get here so fast, anyway? I'd have thought you'd still be floating around in space."

Brushing back dust-clogged red hair with one hand, the junior Inspector said, "When the explosions started I used police authority to hold a shuttle that was about to launch and get a seat. I was worried about my cute partner," he joked with a tired grin. Seeing that Leon was in no mood for humor, he continued, "They pretty much grabbed me at the spaceport lobby and sent me to help out - when you were found they called for the ADP to see if it was dangerous to leave the PMB there while looking for more survivors, and I happened to be nearby. I pulled the recorder's disk and played the video feed to see if it had anything important. When the chief heard you'd been on the scene, he sent me to get a report on what happened after the unit shut down, and I keep getting called with orders from higher up the food chain saying to hurry up about it. I'm just wondering -"

The chirp of the police-band cell in his suit pocket cut Daley off, and he answered with another wry grin to Leon, who was starting to be amused in spite of himself. "Inspector Wong ... Yes, sir. I've got him right here actually ... Absolutely, sir, I'll make sure to route a copy to your office ... I'm on it." Closing the phone and jerking his head toward the cruiser he'd arrived in, the redhead confided, "That was Defense Minister Callahan, calling from the emergency Diet session - this is serious, Leon."

Arriving at the car, he retrieved a standard tablet PC from the seat and woke it up, opening a file to take notes in and starting the audio recorder. "This is Inspector Daley Wong, AD Police, interviewing Inspector Leon McNichol, also AD Police, recovered from the scene of the incident in a prototype police motorcycle battloid. As the logs from the unit have already been retrieved, could you start from when it shut down?"

Running through his memories, the battered policeman paused a moment, then began, "I'd just caught up with the DD and was out of weapons, so I tried a physical attack. It caught the blow and threw me into a wall, and things are fuzzy from there - the next thing I can say for sure is that the DD was in about the same place but heavily damaged, and the pilot had opened the cockpit for some reason. The blue Knight Saber was in one of their motorbike units, but she'd raised her own suit's arm to aim at the pilot. For some reason she didn't or couldn't fire. Then that giant... thing attacked again. It ripped the DD's pilot out of the cockpit and tossed her aside, then beat it into scrap and hit what was left with another energy blast. Blue went to check on the pilot while the fast one attacked the monster, but she got smacked away as well. It moved then so it was hard to see from where I was buried, but the last two Sabers attacked it then, and lead it back to the quake zone."

Surprised, his partner queried, "You don't think it was working with them, then, some kind of battlemover piloted by the missing one with the green suit?"

"After what happened with the Griffon?" Leon shook his head. "She's got to be dead, crushed like jelly. As for the monster, it sure didn't look like a battlemover, and it was acting completely uncontrollable, like a rogue buma, not in any kind of teamwork with them or anyone else. It's more likely they were after that thing and the battles just happened to cross, though that still doesn't say where it came from or where it went."

Daley made a few notes, then looked back at the file and asked, "The pilot wasn't in the DD when it was destroyed, then? What happened to her?"

Leon frowned again, remembering. Eventually he answered, "I didn't look back that way until the monster and the pink and white Knight Sabers had left... She was covered in blood, dead or just unconscious, and her partner had collapsed but was still moving. The blue Saber carried them both away." The frown deepened at that, but the rest of his face was an unreadable mask.

"According to Kaufmann's statement, he hired the Knight Sabers to retrieve her and the DD, or at least destroy it," the redhead noted. "Given that I only arrested him a couple hours before, that would have been in line with their contract if they didn't know. It still doesn't look good for them, though."

Leon was surprised by that one, complaining, "They're trying to pin this on them? The Sabers have always been on our side; even when that building was destroyed the investigation showed it was the gas heating system, set off by the buma's grenades."

"Someone has to take the rap, and it's either them or the DD pilot, since the other battlemover disappeared," the other cop reasoned. He stopped the recorder and entered a few commands, sending copies of the file and his notes to headquarters and the various political offices that had wanted it and had the authority to make it stick. Then he settled more comfortably in the driver's seat and began again. "Okay, once more, from the beginning of the encounter this time. This is Inspector Daley Wong..."

Amid the massive rescue, cleanup and recovery efforts, no one took any special notice of one more buma clearing debris, especially not in the quake zone. That it was carrying a small metal cooler and putting chunks of flesh and hair inside before returning to the unmarked van it alone had arrived in, went unremarked as well.

Linna woke reluctantly, curling into the fluffy blankets. She hadn't slept that well for a week at least, not when she was alone. She didn't know why, but her strength problems had turned out not to be problems as her relationship with Yasuo progressed; after a certain point it just drained away and she could be a normal woman for a while instead of living in a world of eggshells and rice paper. It made... things... even better, and she was pretty sure Yasuo enjoyed her enthusiasm as well. Eyes still closed she gave a salacious grin and snuggled the pillow tighter - the new infirmary bed was just incredibly comfortable, she could sleep here all the...

*Wait, the infirmary? Why would I be in the infirmary?* Arms, legs, fingers, toes, tail, nose - everything checking in and twitching against the covers as she took inventory. Something else that needed taking care of, but not immediately yet, and no damage that felt worse than mild bruising. "What could have happened?" she wondered quietly. "We were just getting ready to jump the DD, but then what?" None of the other beds were occupied and the clock display on the monitor in the corner said it was around two PM of the same day they'd mobilized in the wee hours of the morning, so she hadn't been out for a serious amount of time.

Shrugging, she got up and took care of that increasingly urgent problem then took a quick shower, emerging draped in a big yellow towel and fluffing out her spiky hair so it would dry on its own. That was another question - why had she been sleeping in the buff? Even if she had somehow gotten knocked out without raising a welt on her head, she hadn't had any injuries bad enough to need to strip her to treat, though she'd noticed a needle mark in her left elbow, familiar from the times she'd need to have blood drawn for testing or to have a supply in case she needed a transfusion. It was one mystery after another, but if she'd been put here instead of her room in the HQ apartments there had to be a reason.

Letting out a resigned puff of air, she snagged the remote control and an emery board from the desk and perched on the bed to do her toenails and watch the news. She quickly forgot all thoughts of pedicures as coverage continued of the devastation that had struck the center of the city, from a battle that had lasted barely two minutes. With so little time to get any cameras on the scene footage was limited, just a few shaky, long range shots of something big and dark moving among the low buildings of a minor business district, firing a series of energy blasts from its head, and grainy stills from a cell phone camera.

"What the hell happened here!" she blurted.

"We were hoping you could tell us," said a man's voice from the doorway. She placed it as soon as she looked - it was Sylia's, no, 'Cecilia Ishioka-Wayne's' private doctor, T. T. Vector. "I take it that means you don't remember what happened last night, then?"

He sat down at the desk, booting up the terminal there and activating a second, dedicated monitor on the wall. Watching curiously as he navigated the file system, Linna could see that he was pulling up a clip from Nene's hardsuit camera, and momentarily it opened, showing a low angle shot of some giant, hairy monster swelling to fill the screen, a scrap of green and grey hanging from one shoulder then falling away as it slammed its fists together with a crash of displaced air and roared.

*Green and grey? That's the bodysuit for my new armor!* "Did that thing attack me, then?" she asked incredulously. "I don't feel worked over, but not like that time when Hiryuko healed me, either. What is it, some kind of buma?" *Oh, great, he's got Bad News Face. Do they give classes in that at medical school or something?*

Bracing herself for whatever was coming, Linna was still unprepared when the doctor solemnly stated, "Actually, that's you. Miss Kagami's hardsuit camera got the best view, but her mother was also watching from a more distant location and reported that when the clouds cleared, you became fascinated by the full moon and transformed into the giant, ape-like creature. Though exhibiting no signs of conscious thought you then proceeded to attack the designated mission target, but the collateral damage was extreme and once it was silenced Mistress Ishioka-Wayne and Miss Kagami were forced to lead you away from populated areas until the transformation reversed itself."

Paling and hugging her arms to her chest, Linna sickly said, "I attacked Nene and Sylia? Oh no, are they...?" Looking wildly at the other beds as if she could somehow have missed two of her best friends lying in them, she felt no reassurance - that thing had been HUGE, and the video on the news had shown energy blasts that leveled entire BLOCKS.

"They are fine, as is Miss Asagiri and the other BU-33S who was assisting the pilot of the battlemover, Nam I believe her name was. Unfortunately the pilot herself - the young lady Miss Asagiri had been involved with recently, if I understand correctly - did not, and as you saw on the news, collateral damage was severe." The doctor's face tightened briefly before returning to a professional calm, as he concluded, "As for yourself, apart from minor abrasions and contusions and your still anomalous tail, you seem to be in perfect health. I must recommend avoiding strong exertion or excitement until the cause of the incident can be determined, however."

The anchorman was giving the latest update on the numbers injured and dead, as well as still missing. The brunette laughed hollowly before repeating, "No exertion or excitement, got it." Eyes glistening, she grabbed the big pillow and hugged it, chin sinking into one end as she kept watching the news. The young doctor asked her a few other questions but she didn't really hear, just shaking her head until he went away and she could cry for real. Nene appeared sometime later to hold her and that was even worse, because murdering monsters didn't deserve to have friends like that.

The Knight Sabers were supposed to STOP rampaging monsters, dammit, not become them. That was what she'd joined to do, what she was proud to do. *What I'll do anything it takes to do,* she resolved, finally wiping away her tears, and dropping the pillow so she could hug Nene back. *If they can't find out what happened, and how to stop it ever happening again, I'll do what's necessary. To stop rampaging monsters from hurting people.* She gave the younger girl a squeeze - the redhead was one of the few who could handle the incredible strength she was still getting used to - and murmured thanks for being such a good friend.

Feeling Linna come around, the half-spirit patted her back and happily returned the squeeze.

Linna had stayed behind when Nene and Sylia left not long after, tail tucked close around her waist and once again hugging the stuffing out of her pillow - nearly literally - as she stayed glued to the news coverage with a deeply sorrowful expression, though the first crushing surge of guilt had thankfully passed. Nene was kind of glad, one of the things they had to do was take Sylvie's body to a funeral home where Sylia had connections, which the grieving former dancer would undoubtedly have found devastating. Nene was bad enough off herself and even Sylia, who'd never met the buma alive, was solemn. She'd dropped Nene off at ADPolice headquarters on her way to pick up Priss, the surviving sexaroids, and surprisingly enough Cynthia, who was no doubt in for a record-breaking Sylia-lecture after running away.

She was somewhat on edge, under the circumstances, so when the Chief spotted her coming into the office and bellowed, "ROMANOVA! WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN, EVERYONE GOT CALLED IN HOURS AGO!" she snapped back without conscious thought.

"I've been taking my FRIEND to the MORGUE, OKAY! She was KILLED last night, and I got hurt in it myself!" Suddenly realizing what she'd just done, she paled and stared at her feet, waiting to be fired for yelling at the boss. Fortunately she hadn't said anything about why they'd been there or how she was injured, that would have lead to even bigger problems.

Taken aback momentarily, Todo whispered a curse and wiped away the sweat on his balding pate awkwardly, before quietly apologizing, "I'm sorry to hear that, Romanova. There was too much of that going around last night." She wasn't a line officer after all, where death was a daily prospect and came all too often for friends and comrades. In some ways, she was very young, and to tell the truth he liked how she reminded him of his niece at times.

More firmly, the thickset man commanded, "Well, you're here now, so get over here and help me answer these damn phones. Everyone else from the office is out on disaster relief, and every two-bit politico from the Prime Minister to the Nerima-cho dog catcher wants to know what we're doing about that disappearing Z-class battlemover. Tell them the investigation is in progress and we'll deal with it as firmly as the law allows. The press gets the same story and not a word more! If there's an actual, current buma incident, transfer them to the Second Division in Yokohama, they've kept their response unit intact to deal with them while our officers and heavy equipment assist emergency services."

Eventually, the fires were put out, the streets cleared, everyone who could be saved had been saved, and life in Megatokyo returned to something like the old routine. Reconstruction would still be underway for some time and the buma crews were out in even greater force than the previous, still ongoing Kanto quake recovery levels. The ADP was kept busy with over worked and under maintained rogues, but thankfully no major incidents involving the more powerful security and military models occurred. The government witch-hunt a few of the more extreme politicians had tried to stir up against the Knight Sabers was stifled by more level heads, with some help from a subtle media campaign of data showing their many pro-bono sorties to stop rampaging buma and a couple of contracts to capture major criminals leaked to investigating reporters, though their standing in even the shadier government circles had taken a significant dive.

Sylia had set Nam and Anri up with full identities in another part of the city after making the necessary repairs and modifications to their systems. The shimmer of her synchronization system's energy field had prevented Leon or his mecha from getting clear images of Nam's facial structure, and lavender was a common enough hair color - including the dye jobs, anyway - not to be suspicious on its own. For her part, Anri hadn't been implicated in anything since arriving on the planet, so she was clear. Their records from the Genaros escape were simply altered enough for image matching systems to pass them by and since the voices at Genom who'd been putting the official heat on had only ever cared about the DD and its pilot, their disappearance was quickly swept under by the tide of current police work.

Nam had gotten a different cycling jumpsuit, of course, a little more subdued than her original yellow and blue - the new one was mostly black, with a white collar and trim stripes at the shoulder seams, a wide white stripe down the outside of each leg, and a pair of blue bands, one light and one dark, that wrapped around her from the left shoulder across her chest and lower back to end on the left thigh. It was actually quite similar to the white jumpsuit Sylia had worn to drive the Batmobile, but rather than a clamshell breastplate Nam had just added silver-grey boots, armguards, and a wide, segmented belt with a dozen little compartments to help hide the sonic blasters she still kept handy as a precaution.

Nam and Anri came to visit Cynthia a time or two, trying to build bridges with the Akimotos after inducing the girl to run away with them, with but limited success. She and Nene had continued to hang around together in their free time, though not often in company with Priss as it hurt the singer just to be around the purple-eyed buma who was so tied with her memories of Sylvie.

The singer filled her days with music to keep busy, and the Replicants' increasing popularity saw them score a gig at the fashionable Club Olympus. She'd lost a bit of weight as well, and every now and then she'd see a well-built woman with short dark hair from the corner of her eye, only to spin and find no one there. The funeral for the freedom-loving buma had been held a few days later, but Priss had been unable to lay her to rest in her heart.

Linna had quit her instructor's job at Phoebe's Gym, claiming a long term injury from what had become known as "the Doomsday Incident" after the battlemover's involvement had become more public knowledge. As the melee specialist had become more withdrawn and subdued, Sylia worried that there might be some element of truth to the lie, if not in a physical sense. The only time she was her old self was with her music-industry boyfriend, and despite the injunction against such outside liaisons in the groups' largely ignored charter the Saber leader could only feel thankful that the relationship seemed stable for once.

It was two weeks after the disastrous battle that she finally made some small headway in finding a reason for Linna's metamorphosis, as Dr. Vector finally delivered the results of the blood test comparisons he'd run between the sample taken that night and on previous occasions before and after her tail had appeared. Since regrowing the appendage, all of the samples had included varying amounts of an unusual hormone, and on the night in question the level was an order of magnitude greater.

The unknown gland running the length of the member was the obvious culprit, but the trigger remained unclear until Sylia remembered the odd link it had to the optic nerves, the extra fibers in her spinal cord that were the only other major anatomical difference between Linna and baseline human. The full moon seemed to be a reasonable possibility then since it had been the last thing she looked at before transforming, and to test the hypothesis a virtual reality headset was loaded with the simulation of an otherwise quiet moonlit field. On a pleasant sunny day they hiked out to the valley where the Orca IV had crashed, Nene and Nam also tagging along in case the experiment worked *too* well. Dr. Vector was not included in the expedition, as Nam was a capable medic and there was no way around the need to strip down unless she wanted to tear out of her clothes if it worked. While Linna could handle being nude in only semi-private situations, she preferred it to be in solely female company.

After setting up the recorders they'd backpacked to the site and taping the sensors in place on Linna's spine and a small shaved patch on the tail, the VR rig was booted up and the brunette carefully put it on, after a double-check to make sure the moon displayed would be behind her at first.

"Alright, we've got a good baseline for the daylight and inside the simulation, Linna, try turning around and looking at the moon," Sylia instructed.

She complied and for a moment it seemed like a bust. "Nothing, Sylia. Just a moon," the tailed woman reported, disappointedly.

"It's not the pattern itself that's important then, it seems," the Saber leader noted. "Turn around again, and I'll change the setting from a plain white and grey circle to an actual, true-color moon image."

After the settings were adjusted Linna turned again to look at the ever so slightly more greenish genuine moon, and it soon became clear they'd reasoned things accurately, the monitor equipment erupting in a cacophony of bleeps, chirps, and burbles as readings changed and values skyrocketed, followed by the sharp crack of the headset shattering as a baboon-like snout expanded under it.

Thankfully, the transformation hadn't even completely occurred before reversing due to the lack of moonlight after the headset broke, so there was little cleanup to be done this time. As the troupe picked up their gear and headed back to the base Nene reflected that Linna seemed happier than she'd seen the former dancer since the battle, while Nam, who'd bounced back for the most part, was shaken and pale, and noticeably keeping the other two women between herself and the brunette.

Linna had noticed the usually sweet-tempered buma's hesitance as well, and while it stung a bit she could hardly blame the girl. Figuring that the best way to reassure her was the way she'd be insuring the world would stay kaiju-free, she asked, "So, will Dr. Vector be able to take the tail off, or should I make a hospital appointment, Sylia?"

"That's an extreme solution to jump to," the Saber leader cautioned. "We still don't fully understand what purpose it serves for you otherwise. The simple shape of a moon had no effect, it was only when the specific light spectrum was received that the metamorphosis began. A pair of sunglasses that block those frequencies-"

"Could get lost or broken," Linna cut her off, irritated. "Then what? Just don't look? What if I saw it in a reflection from a window, or a puddle on the ground? More importantly, this can't be allowed to happen again, Sylia." Recalling her thoughts from that awful morning, she added, "We're the Knight Sabers. We stop rampaging monsters, it's what we DO." *Whatever it takes,* she reminded herself, snagging the tip of the flicking tail in one hand. Pulling it taut, she formed a knuckle bomb over the other, and slid the arm down her back, wrist twisted just enough that it wouldn't hit anything until reaching -

"EEYOOOWOW!" she yelped as the mini-blast went off with a crack, a small spray of blood falling to the trail while the length of the tail came away in her left hand. Staggering as her balance shifted, she whimpered and blinked back tears of pain. Rubbing her sore posterior, she shakily told her stunned companions, "Okay... I'm going to admit, that wasn't such a great idea," before tripping as she lost her balance again.

Priss was just on her way into the Comet Club to set up the band's gear when she saw the woman again, a svelte profile in blue and white leathers with short dark hair. Dropping the microphone stands she'd been carrying she spun to look, seeing only a shadow moving into a nearby alley. She dashed over, breath catching in a suddenly dry throat- It was empty, nothing but a dead end with a couple of half-filled trash cans, not even a fire escape or a window someone could have jumped to. Silently cursing herself for holding on to stupid, impossible dreams, the singer stalked back out and picked up the equipment again. "I'm going nuts," she muttered irritably, eyeing the scratched chrome where one part had scuffed against the pavement.

Sylia was dreaming. She had to be, she told herself, because there was no way she would ever, in a million years, be lounging on top of a piano in a slinky, sequined dress. Particularly not when Fargo was at the keys. There was a short drumroll from behind her, and she turned to see Linna grinning back at her from a drum kit, while Priss launched into a bluesy intro on an angular electric guitar, and Nene stood by with some strange combination of a bass guitar and synth. Without any input from her, her body turned back to face the front of the stage, which seemed to be in a smoky club of some kind, with an enthusiastic crowd cheering and carrying on. The only sounds she heard were the music, as Nene and Fargo joined in, and her own voice as she raised a microphone and began to sing.

*This is so completely embarrasing,* she thought, trying to ignore what her dream-self sang. She usually had far better control, but this dream seemed to be completely beyond her ability to alter. She could feel tears trickling down her cheeks, as some of the forms in the crowd became recognizable... Her mother, in her favorite kimono. Papa Stingray in a lab coat. Little Brian in the jumpsuit with the juice stain from a food fight when they were seven. Mackie, in his overalls, with a smudge of grease on his nose... Daddy... She could feel herself sobbing now, but her voice still kept singing as the second verse came around.

When she'd finished, she stepped down from the piano and across the stage, trading microphone for guitar with Priss. At least her outfit had turned into something a little less out of character, a sleeveless silver wrap-around that wasn't quite so tight and ended near the knees instead of almost at her ankles, with matching long, fingerless gloves. Of course, she hadn't touched a guitar since her second year in high school, but her dream-self seemed to know what to do with it.

Fargo played an intro on the piano, then she and Nene joined in on their strings, and Priss launched into a song she'd never heard of, though it was very much in the feisty singer's style, even at the slower, more mournful pace the bluesy atmosphere called for. "You're not the only one who's lonely/try sitting on the crescent moon..."

Hands still moving on their own, Sylia looked out at the crowd again, fearing the reaction she'd see on their faces, but Mother was smiling softly and nodding with the beat, Papa had that faintly puzzled expression that meant he didn't understand but was happy if she was, and Daddy... He pulled off the cowl and gave her a wink, as if to say, "It's all right to be a person, too." The tempo picked up, more the usual Replicants style after the first chorus, and Mackie danced around in front of the stage with a faceless, purple haired woman.

Sighing softly and snuggling into her pillow, the worry lines on Sylia's sleeping face smoothed away as she relaxed and let peaceful dreams soothe her mind.

In a run-down trailer perched precariously close to a giant footprint, Priss opened her eyes and sat up slowly. "That was one fucked up dream," she muttered, shaking her head. "Wonder if Sylia can really sing and play like that, though?" Dismissing the notion, she hauled herself out of bed and headed for the bathroom before grabbing a pad to write down lyrics and chords - it was never a good idea to ignore the muse when it flowed, and it wasn't like she'd have gotten back to sleep any time soon anyway. *Born to be happy, yeah right,* she thought, scribbling down the last of what she remembered. It was no good, she couldn't do something this upbeat now. She tossed the pad in the general direction of the shelf, and grabbed her guitar to work on something a little closer to her heart at the moment.

The intro was solid, and the first few measures, but the transition before the chorus was still a little awkward. She tried a few variations, chording around, before finding something that fit and singing along. "You, angel, fallen to earth, living here and now..."

*Yes.* Writing the new measure on the composition sheet still open on her table from earlier, she moved on to the next problem spot.

And, in the smoky haze of Bill's Blues Bar, Fargo waited out the guitar intro before hitting the keys and belting out the first lines of an ancient Cramps tune with a secretive smirk.

* * *

><p>Next time on Bubblegum Disaster: Don't bring a gun to a Z fight. It never helps.<p>

* * *

><p>For those who still haven't recognized it (which seems to be *everyone*) Linna's high-fashion date wear is a slightly modified version of the Great Saiyaman costume from DBZ. The black body glove and green tabard are the same, though of course cut for a woman, as is the red sash (though that's apparently not worn often - my toy had it before the fire, but the reference images all just have a black belt with a round yellow buckle. D'oh. Maybe it was added to match the red helmet? All the shots I have are with the sunglasses or bare-faced.) but the white boots and gloves are much more form-fitting, and instead of a helmet or sunglasses, Linna had worn a red bandanna headband to match the sash, and pulled one down to cover her face (like a cowboy from a western perspective, more ninja-like to the Nipponophile.) Note also that this is the aftermath of Saiyawoman's battle with the Bakemono Burglar...<p>

Cynthia and range of her abilities - In Ch3, she watches the battle on top of Genom Tower and puts up a shield that stops the satellite laser cold, all from her room at the Akimotos' cottage, but here she's in the city but can't help Sylvie heal, who's closer than the Tower was then. This is in fact intentional, not an error - for one thing, the shield is a spell, one of the simplest but which is as strong as there's power to make it, while healing magic spells are very much more complex; the simple energy infusion that she's been using can't be done at long distance. It's also more of a Jedi/Force type effect, the better your visualization and willpower the better it works - much more primal than proper spells as such - and even as an exceptional one she's still a child, and by that time an exhausted, distraught child. As unfortunate as it was, Sylvie's death was necessary for Priss's development and this way it also shows that Cynthia has limitations of her own.

As for her essentially endless magical energy, that's thanks to what Kami-sama did to turn her into a normal girl and two fairybots - as previously noted, that spell is intended to be used to prepare a new successor to the office of planetary Kami by separating any evil in them out to a new being, who then generally is either captured or escapes and becomes a new demon lord - it calls directly on the power of the Heart of the World, giving the person it is used on a link to it. Cynthia had no malice in her, so the spell was able to separate a different aspect of her being, the cybernetic from the biological. Despite carrying the Heart, Cynthia is not a Kami successor and does not have the power of the office - but she does have the link, and only Laviolus Daimaoh (or his counterpart Piccolo, a quarter of the way around the galaxy, the South and East quadrant kami having dealt with their darker selves) can rival her power. She will need to perform the spell as well when a successor does appear, hence her being tutored in magic with the knowledge instilled in the fae at the same time.

"Bake two cakes in one oven" - killing two birds with one stone, for those who like cute little birdies and yummy snacks.

"Anata" is a particularly polite way of saying "you" in Japanese, commonly used by wives to their husbands the way an English speaker would use "dearest" or something similar. I can't remember if it's specifically considered a feminine-use word, however.

Exaggerated, humor-anime-style reactions - the Kagamis are the mirror clones of Ranma Saotome, after all, and half supernatural as well. As such, and bearing in mind DBZ's humor manga roots as well, those kind of larger than life expressions will occasionally come out, despite the generally more serious tone of BGC, which I usually adhere to. As things continue to get grimmer, they'll probably get more common, because too much angst and gloom makes my trigger finger itch.

Another funeral for Priss to attend - in the past year, she's been to Irene's, Sho and his mom's, and now Sylvie's - that's a lot, for someone under 25, with as few close friends as she has.

Answers that can keep until the afternoon - No indeed, our Sylia is *not* a morning person. Good thing everything seems to happen at night, ne? If you watch the series, there's about one scene per OVA that actually takes place while the sun is up.

Club Olympus - in one of the city panoramas, I believe part of the opening montage of OVA 1, a neon sign that says "Olympus" can be seen. While this is probably a reference to the shape of Genom Tower and Masamune Shirow's Appleseed, I chose to make it a nightclub's sign, and being on a bright street would make it either a fashionable and successful one, or very short-lived.

The Comet Club, of course, is from The Tick cartoon, a superheroes only club where they can kick back in the company of their peers. With the way even the canon Sabers mimic the classic superhero style, this amuses me greatly, but there isn't any major cape presence in the world at this point - the Bat-clan was all they ever had, and now there's only one active member besides Sylia, over in the Gotham sector of East City, the megalopolis created as Boston, NYC, and coastal cities even as far south as Hartford Connecticut grew until they merged, giving new meaning to the term "urban sprawl."

The song Priss performs in Sylia's dream is "Asu e Touchdown," included in both Hurricane Live 2032 and 2033, though only the 2032 edition has the music video with non-series animation showing the recruitment of the Sabers, which is officially canon. The one she's working out the music for is "Bara no Soldier" from H.L. 2033. "Rock Me" (despite being addressed to a "lonely boy" in the lyrics, framed for a mostly straight audience) and "Crisis - Ikari o Komete Hashire" (also from 2033) are probably also Sylvie-songs, IC speaking, even though the second was specifically written as a Gibson/Griffon song by Tsubokura Yuiko, the VA who played her.

*Batman* unmasking, and telling Sylia 'it's alright to be a person, too'? Yaright? - Two points here: A) this is a Batman who got married and had a daughter, who was two by the time he died; B) it's a dream, after all, by a girl who was only two when she last saw her daddy.

Fargo's 'ancient Cramps tune' is "Bikini Girls with Machine Guns," and I'm sure you can see why he'd be amused by it. Since I'm not really into the Blues genre (There's a few numbers I like, but not the majority - the original Bikini Girls is more Punk than Blues, even if his version isn't.) I had to kind of talk around whatever Sylia sang, because I don't know any that would fit. If anyone has a suggestion for something with piano and electric guitar that fits a feeling of faltering under the weight of the world, be sure to let me know. BB King's _How Blue Can You Get?_ maybe, modified for a female singer, but even that doesn't really fit.

Guardian 215 should be imagined with the vocal talents of Susan Blu; if you don't know her by name, she did (among other shows) Arcee on the post-movie Transformers episodes, as well as in the movie itself. You can even keep the flanging effect if you like, though it's not really there.

Many thanks to my prereaders: Nathan Baxter, Hide Hasegawa, Leong Mun Yee, Andrew Wilson, Christopher Gilbert, and Drakensis, and to everyone on the BDPreread mailing list - you get your name listed if you actually make commentary, but just reading and finding nothing bad enough to complain about is still commentary of a sort.

Drakensis used to keep a remote archive of the story on his web site, but unfortunately it no longer exists. Since he's a damn good fic writer himself, I'll give a link to his profile instead, as a thank you for the effort when he did. It's at .net/u/347490/drakensis

Bubblegum Crisis belongs to Youmex and Animeigo, I make no claims otherwise. Please don't sue me, I have no money to speak of and fanfic does more to promote your products than anything else I know of - without it, I never would have known about anime at all, and I'd certainly never have bought the BGC tapes based on the sucky box copy.

Ranma 1/2 I'm not so sure of, except that the creator was Rumiko Takahashi, not me, and that I make no claims to own IT either. Likewise, Dragonball was created by Akira Toriyama, and is distributed in the US on video by FUNimation. I THINK that both Ranma and Dragonball comics are done by Viz in the US, but that may be incorrect.

The Bionic Six is similarly of unknown provenance, but I have a very vague and unreliable memory that it may have been animated by Suncoast video... In any case, it's STILL not my own creation.

_Dykstra's War_ is by Jeffery D Kooistra, published by Baen Books.

Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z were created by Akira Toriyama, owned overall by Bandai I think, and released on video in the US by FUNimation and in manga by Dark Horse (again not so sure about that one - could be Vis)

Sailor Moon was created by Naoko Takeuchi, and is undoubtedly also owned by some animation studio or another. I know that the RPG rights in North America at least belong to Guardians of Order.

Omake! The straights/gays counter!

Lots of fanfic authors go nuts making the cast match their sexual preference and/or fantasies. I'm not, because even naughty, naughty perverts can have some standards - hence, I've only made changes where strongly justified or where the canon was unclear to begin with. And, what do you know, most of the major cast is, indeed, straight! Here's the breakdown:

Straight:  
>Sylia Linna Mackie Leon MasonLargo (twistedly perverse even by my standards, but straight. You don't want to know what he used to do with that green haired, Sylia look-alike buma from the BU-25B attack sequence in OVA 2)  
>Madigan Chief Todo Lisa Vanette Vision Kou Irene Dr. Raven J B Gibson Naomi Tora Kagami Hiryuko Kagami -<br>Total : 16

A Little Bent:  
>Anri is just gay enough to have fun with a special enough woman, but generally looks at guys.<br>Nene is curious, she needs to experiment and find her preferences. She looks but only admits to looking at guys.  
>Quincy dresses like a gay pimp, but only really loves power. No one dares to ask about his private life, and he likes it that way.<p>

Total : 3

Really Bisexual:  
>Priss Mina - of course, as sexaroids they're designed to enjoy it in as many ways as possible, so not being bi is anomalous for them Hyatt Dot Lou Nam -<br>Total : 6

Exclusively Gay:  
>Sylvie Meg Daley -<br>Total : 3

Not interested or too young:  
>Niichigo Cynthia Lisa probably belongs here, certainly the Chief thinks so! She's got that whole teen-girl-boy-crazy thing going on, though, even though she hides it well most of the time. Her room is utterly plastered with boy-band posters.<p>

Double Omake Bonus!  
>Tales from the Cutting Room Floor!<p>

I really wanted to include this, but it just didn't fit with the way things flowed, and while I couldn't see any way to have Priss plausibly join the outing I needed her to be part of the last KS sighting. Dammit. So, you get the noteblock.

Official disfavor not quite enough to kill another USSD contract, though - they've tracked down the next link in the buyer chain for the DD and want a deniable asset to make him vanish over there, just happening to appear over here, be overwhelmed with remorse after the massive property damage, and turn himself in. Air quotes as necessary. Now needing ca$$$h more than ever with still more equipment damage and the expense of trying to find out what the hell happened to Linna, Sylia takes the job. "Right now, the Knight Sabers are a very plausibly deniable asset, and not that far from being a liability. Which will it be?" I like this idea. There's at least a month, probably two or three, before OVA 6, and there should be something to fill that time frame. Who is it? How about a former terrorist turned assassin called Snake, who hides his face behind a mirrored mask? Combo GIJoe/TFs ref! Double score! "Sssuch a wonderful artwork you made in Megatokyo, but what wasss the point if you disssclaimed it? They jussst don't make terrorists like they usssed to... COOOBR-" interrupted by gut punch, doubles over wheezing.

EOF


	12. Chapter 6a

10_BD_WOASS_Ch_06a

2010-10-30 - annoying real-word typos fixed  
>2009-11-22 - a few wrong-word spellchecks and comma stomping (I always write these massive paragraph sized sentences the first time through, then spend dozens of edits breaking them up...)<br>2008-08-13 - fixed an egregious continuity error  
>2008-08-11 - moved part of the end notes back to this file<br>2008-01-15 - split the chapter in two, as it was becoming unwieldy.  
>2008-01-13 - to the beginning of the final battle<br>2008-01-12 - highway sequence through to Berlin  
>2008-01-11 - finally active again, did church scene through bank battle<br>2007-06-11 - continuity edit, notes put into chronological order-  
>2007-06-10 - final confrontation plotted, voidspider scenes  
>2007-06-09 - finished to Saber meeting, retcon edits in 55-EX  
>2007-06-08 - finished first three scenes, Priss's arc closure notes. transcripts complete<br>2007-05-30 - added summary segment from old email  
>01-15-2005 - created document, began adding notes<p>

"YEAH! I did it! I did it!" A lavender crowned woman danced around the room, bouncing with glee. Skipping over to the videophone in one wall, she dialed rapidly, grinning and hopping in place excitedly as it rang, then repeating, "Nene! I did it, I really did!" as soon as the call was answered.

Blinking at her usually more reserved friend, the blue-eyed police officer blinked and replied, "Er... That's nice, Nam. What did you do?"

Holding her hands out in front of the camera, the sexaroid concentrated for a moment, and a bluish green glow formed between them. "I pulled out my magic! I learned the healing energy aura technique!"

Eyes widening, the redhead's grin turned into a pasted rictus and she looked uncomfortably at the amused expressions around her before responding, "That's, um, really great. I'm happy for you... You do realize I'm at work and this is a speakerphone, right?"

As her friend hurriedly disconnected, Nene looked around at her officemates and tried to laugh it off. "Eheheh, that girl, huh? She's really into, um, traditional medicine..." Ducking her head to hide behind the stack of paperwork she was processing, the young woman grumbled to herself but had to feel happy for her friend, succeeding after only a few weeks of training.

After all, it had taken months for Linna to consciously draw out her ki for external manipulation, and she'd already been a skilled martial artist. The energy was the same, when all was said and done, only the way it was used was different between the simple, split-second combat effects and the more involved but versatile magical auras and spells. Another healer was always welcome in her line of work - both of them. She let her face settle into a more natural grin and ran the next page of the report through the scanner.

Bewilderbeast Studios Present

BUBBLEGUM DISASTER

Season One

WISHES ON A SHOOTING STAR

A work of BGC fan fiction by ClassicDrogn

Chapter Six

There was a shriek of tearing metal, then the security buma fell, evenly split down the middle by the white Saber's folding blade. Crackling electricity discharged across its surface from the ruptured superconductor ring, already nearly exhausted by weapons fire. The hardsuited figure eyed her handiwork for a moment before jetting away. Moments later, alarms began to wail.

Spurred into urgency, the four mercenaries flew down corridors lit with the red of warning strobes, riding the ground effect with their jump jets. Security doors slammed closed, hopelessly far behind them as they raced for the garage where their objective lay waiting. Two more buma fell, blasted through the weaker throat armor with ruthless precision, then Green forced open a truck's rear doors, sturdy metal squealing as it resisted unrelenting mechanical strength. They checked the contents, then the pink one paused and cocked her head, probably reporting to their employer from the jump in radio emissions, though it was too well scrambled to intercept.

Blue tugged the opening front door out of the driver's hand, mercilessly silencing his startled protest with a point blank forehead shot from her palm blaster. Ignoring the foul-smelling vapor and debris that sprayed from the back of his head to coat the far window, she kicked him into the passenger side and climbed in. At the same time, White activated the controls for the outer door and Pink used her laser to etch the Knight Sabers' signature into the garage floor, while Green placed a demolition charge on the depot fuel storage tank to destroy the place and the rest of the prototype combat buma in the shipment.

The trio hopped up on top of the truck and rode it out, expertly compensating for the acceleration as it cornered and gathered speed up the ramp from the underground facility. Behind them, burning fuel gushed out and licked at the rear wheels like a man late to work just missing the bus.

Leon struggled futilely with the controls, then slumped in the powerless battleframe. He was buried under too much rubble to even try the emergency release, designed to eject the front of the unit's torso to let a pilot escape - right now, that would just leave the weight of the PMB and the rubble as well crushing him. The white and pink Sabers had attacked that... whatever it was, then lead it back toward the quake zone - he could only be thankful for that, for his own sake as well as any citizens still in the area, but he hated being out of the action!

Craning his head the other way, he saw Blue, who'd climbed out of her own transforming unit to cradle the DD's pilot in her arms. *Huh, the Knight Sabers knew her somehow? Wait a minute, her helmet's off... Priss!*

The ringing of his videophone snapped the police officer instantly awake, long years of anticipation for the next emergency making him spring upright even before his eyes were fully open. Lingering twinges from ligaments torn in the collapse fought for attention, but he'd been certified for duty a week ago - no little aches were going to keep him down when the docs had finally agreed to let him up.

He breathed deeply for a few seconds, remembering the critical information he'd kept to himself, on nothing more than the gut feeling that the Sabers were on their side, no matter what anyone said. What little evidence there was agreed with him, but he still wasn't totally sure why he did it. Sure, Priss was hot stuff, but she'd made it clear time and again she didn't like the police or him personally, and now that he knew what her less public job was the one exception to that suddenly made a lot more sense.

Perhaps he should hold being played with like that against her, but they'd gotten the job done when the ADP was too bound by red tape to get in there and do it, and wasn't that what counted at the end of the day? For criminal cases, sure, due process all the way, but when out of control machines were threatening lives, he couldn't begrudge an outside team who got in, got it done, and got out.

The videophone was still ringing, so he reached over and flicked it on, revealing Daley's disgustingly energetic face.

"Morning, Leon-chan!" the flamboyant detective caroled. "Why the grumpy face? Come on, look over here." Giving up on getting his brooding partner to cheer up, he continued seriously, "We've got a case."

Leaning back on one arm, Leon ran a hand through his hair to get rid of the bed-head and grunted, "What's up?"

"On the waterfront, Genom Industrial Complex number three, in flames," the other man replied disingenuously. "Your darlings pulled a hell of a stunt, turned the place upside down."

Still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, Leon was shocked by the confluence with his jumbled thoughts of a moment before. He shot Daley a startled look, then requested, "Give me the highlights."

The redhead looked grim as he scanned the report off to one side for a moment, then summarized, "We've got a live witness. It looks like it was the genuine Knight Sabers after all, all four back in their full suits, not the light weight ones from your battle recorder. I don't have to tell you, after the last incident the hounds are baying for their blood."

His partner had dressed quickly while getting the run-down, and looked back while automatically patting down the sport jacket to hang properly around his shoulder holster to say, "Understood, I'll be right there." Opening the blind so at least the apartment would get some sun even if he wasn't there to enjoy it, Leon then hustled out the door and downstairs to the building's garage.

A heavy scowl on his face, Chairman Quincy listened in on the board meeting discussing last night's attack. Typically, when all was said and done, more was being said than done, between recriminations at Bouwer, the head of the Security division, and his counter-allegations of insiders supporting the vigilante group with technology and information about company plans. Davis, Flint's weak-chinned successor at GPCC after the man disappeared, disavowed any knowledge of such activities, and the Chairman's lip curled in contempt.

He was fairly sure the Genom Production Control Center was actually being run by the personal assistant Flint had hired, and the new man had kept. If so, and it went well, Davis would be removed and this 'Largo' openly installed as division head - Quincy firmly believed in rewarding ability, and a certain degree of ruthless efficiency was key to staying ahead in the business world. If not, or if the man's ambition proved too great, there were plenty who would willingly replace him.

Patience exhausted for the prattling of fools, he activated his desk camera and the big presentation monitor in the boardroom, his projected image looming over the assembled executives like a stern parent with unruly children.

Arguments immediately silenced, the board members quickly got to their feet and turned to face the screen. From their viewpoint, the monitor was more like a window through which some displeased god gazed down from on high, however Quincy might think of it. Though such levels of hubris were not among his vices, to many middle and upper level employees he was just that, The Chairman Himself, whose name was not to be spoken in vain lest it invoke divine wrath. With the way people who displeased the man at the top tended to vanish, perhaps such fears were less ill-found than they might at first glance seem.

For the moment, though, their full attention was on the Chairman's words. "A grave situation, is it not," he began rhetorically. "So, have you ascertained what the Knight Sabers are after?"

The Deputy Chief Executive Officer bowed his head, temporizing, "I'm sorry sir, we are exerting ourselves to the fullest. However, only Callahan was aware of this project outside of Genom. Their intervention in this secret project indicates that someone who has access to classified company information may be involved."

Face lit from below by the glow of his own monitor, Quincy shifted his gaze, focusing on the DCEO. "I see... Is there any proof?" he asked intensely.

Unconsciously backing away, the man bumped into the desk behind himself. "Ah, no... We think it is a strong possibility..."

The old blond man closed his eyes and frowned, contemplating silently. Momentarily he looked back out at the board, instructing, "All right then. Send Madigan to my office." Not bothering to acknowledge the lackey's agreement, he shut down the big screen, and the board members seated themselves again with a collective sigh of relief. The emperor was appeased, and someone other than themselves was summoned to face him in person.

It had taken some time to find a suitable replacement for Kuroma - below that position's level, the more literal aspects of corporate and political infighting were kept to field operatives, and candidates with just enough moral structure to be reliable but not enough to balk at the true nature of what it meant to be in Division Black were rare. Kuroma's name had seemed a good omen at the time, but it appeared he'd been over-eager and fumbled the timing on an important shipment to the Neliacme separatists in Brazil, the failure and over ingratiating attitude only serving to irritate the Chairman, who headed the secret division - so much so that it didn't even exist in any recorded format - personally.

Despite his youth, the latest candidate seemed to be working out quite nicely, and after an acclimation period Katherine Madigan was getting the utterly average-looking young man with the equally average name, Taro Watanabe, up to speed on the more sensitive projects underway. "It appearrs to displlay a smooth expansion, doesn't it, but we must act cautiously concerrning Tanzaar and Zambique," she commented from her position looking at the monitor over his shoulder. "If it became known that we were directly involved wi' these coups d'etat, protests from otherr countries would come pourin' in."

She listened to Watanabe's reassurances with only half an ear as a movement to one side caught her eye - an unfamiliar young woman with fine features and dark hair, black save where the light brought out a rich purple highlight, in the sort of wind-blown look that took a couple of hours either on a motorcycle or in front of a mirror to achieve, though braided forelocks just brushed the shoulders of her mid-level company uniform. She knew she'd spent a lot more time in her office than in the general workstation area lately, playing catch-up after her severe injuries, but surely she'd have noticed new personnel by now? It's not as if there were that many others at her level to have recruited her, barely a handful in fact.

Well, silence might be golden, but it seldom got answers. "Who's that?" she demanded of her trainee, knowing that as the new guy he'd have been introduced around at the water cooler if nothing else. "The face is unfamiliar, who is she?"

"Ah, that's Millie Jackson," Watanabe replied. "She was transferred in four days ago. I think she was at GPCC before that. Is something wrong?"

There was nothing the lavender haired executive could put her finger on, and yet... Perhaps it was just the slightly uncertain way the woman moved. It might just be an effect of being new, but a lack of self-confidence would never have gotten anyone a place in Black.

Madigan walked purposefully across the round lower floor area - if it was nothing, she'd simply introduce herself and assess the new office mate, if a little pressure made the girl crack then she shouldn't have been here in the first place. If something shadier than that was going on, then finding and preventing that sort of thing was part of her job.

Hearing the crisp footsteps approach, 'Millie' tensed slightly, a bead of sweat rolling across a slightly too-sharp ridge at her temple. She reached out to turn on the terminal and slide her ID card with her left arm, the right hidden by her body and the seat back as the hand slipped furtively into her brown suit jacket. Tension narrowed her chocolate eyes, even as the computer booted and presented a log in prompt.

Before she could do anything rash, the senior executive was summoned away, and she slipped her hand back out from where the jacket had hidden its transformation, wicked blade shortening and splitting again into delicately tapered fingers with the writhing fluidity of nanite sculpted material.

Unable to work out her frustration physically until her shift ended, Nene had made her way to the firing range. Her cover as a simple administrative officer would have made demonstrating her real proficiency a bit problematic, but since it was empty she signed out one of the heavy pistols senior officers were allowed as an optional sidearm and a dozen loaded clips, then took the end booth so she'd have time to trip the counter reset if someone came in before they could see it.

She set one of the foam cutout targets in the holder and ran it out, then loaded and cocked her weapon. Gnashing her teeth, the redhead had to stifle a curse as the range door opened and someone else came in; was it too much for a girl to ask to get a little peace and privacy to make things violently explode and be shredded?

She stilled herself and stood quietly, recognizing Leon's voice talking to... Kevin Yeager, maybe, from the motorpool? ...about last night's attack by those miserable fakes. If anyone in the ADP would stand up for the Knight Sabers, it would be Leon - he'd put his reputation on the line last time with his insistence that she and her friends hadn't been responsible for the terrible damage done, and as the senior Inspector on the case he'd be sure to find the evidence that it wasn't the real Sabers in that raid!

Kevin was speculating on what had been taken while Leon practiced with his new, non-regulation hand-cannon of a revolver, a monster from a new Australian company called an Earthshaker. The other man solicited his ideas on the stolen container, to which the inspector replied, "I don't know, but with the runaround we've had trying to find out, it couldn't be anything good." Finished reloading the three-round cylinder, he took another shot, but hadn't braced his wrists enough and flinched from the massive .60 caliber round's punishing recoil, hissing and rubbing the soreness away.

"They work for money when all's said and done," the blond mused, leaning against the wall behind Leon's firing booth. "I tried to tell you that getting involved with women would be the death of you," he joked.

"Asshole!" Leon accused, punctuating it with another shot downrange. "Is that any way for a soon-to-be father to talk!" Sighting in again after bringing the bucking pistol back under control, he continued the first topic. "So the next one comes with a warning, eh? This is bugging the hell out of me!"

-click-clank-k'chak-click!

Nene couldn't believe it, even Leon thought they were behind it!

-click-clank-k'chak-click!

And after they'd saved him personally, too!

-click-clank-k'chak-click!

It wasn't fair!

-click-clank-k'chak-click!

The Knight Sabers were the good guys!

-click-clank-k'chak-click!

Couldn't people see that!

-click-clank-k'chak-click!

!

Alarmed by the high rate of fire, the two men wandered over to investigate, only to freeze in amazement as the tiny redhead mechanically ejected another clip to fall at her feet with the other six and reloaded, squeezing off another volley faster than some people could aim and fire once. The .454 magnum didn't budge save for the racking of the slide, and the counter walked up to 88 despite the target having only a single, thumb-sized hole.

The fact that the hole was centered on the throat might have made for derisive comment on some ranges, but this was the AD Police - Leon was a line officer and Kevin had only transferred out of the Second Mobile Unit when he found out his wife was expecting, so they both knew that about the only place a normal human pistol could be effective on any of the armored buma was the necessary neck gaps. The office patrol could easily enough find out such things, but who'd have thought petite little Nene was such a good shot, or had the arm strength to compensate for that kind of recoil?

*Maybe it's all that time holding a pencil to do paperwork,* Leon thought dazedly. *I could give it a try more often, perhaps.* Shaking his head clear of such nonsense, the handsome Inspector moved on to more relevant thoughts, like why trails of tears were flowing like waterfalls under misty blue eyes.

All thoughts of covers banished, Nene reloaded again, and then the counter rolled to 99.

When her shift was over Nene had found an empty room to portal out of, one where the camera inside was monitored at a different station then the one in the hall and neither could see the sliding door itself, so no one would notice her vanishing with the dimensional aperture hidden by the doorjamb. She'd picked up Linna for a heavy spar in Miribile, but either she was going to have to break down and learn some more spell magic from her mother or they were going to need to find a new place for that, because with energy attacks added in their matches were becoming too destructive and Hiryuko was getting tired of repairing the practice field all the time.

Despite her earlier resolution, she'd backslid until sixty plus hour "days" were the norm, only holding it to that because training alone was no fun and not very productive and Linna was unwilling to age herself months to the week, while her parents had gotten busier and busier with their guardian spirit duties as all manner of nasty things ran wild with no Kami-sama to keep them under control. After five hours or so the two of them had stopped to get cleaned up and eat, and she decided to catch a bit of sleep before returning to the Mortal Realm fifteen minutes after she'd left it to head down to the garage and leave on her scooter - for the last time, in fact.

She would be meeting Nam on the way to Raven's Garage today where they'd both take delivery of their new motorcycles, and she couldn't wait to see them. The crotchety doctor (though what discipline his honors were in she'd never found out) had had her come by when it was mechanically complete but the unpainted cowls still off, to adjust it for her arm, leg, and body lengths. She'd also needed to pick a color scheme, but after that he'd refused any requests for peeks or even progress updates until it was finished, saying only that it wouldn't take long, and would be worth the wait.

The new proto-biker-babe had chosen a deep blue-black for the base color, contrasting nicely with the various bare metal mechanical parts, and a flame job for the nose and tank that faded from orange to royal purple. Mackie had decried it as overly flashy, but Nene thought it was marvelous on the picture she'd found of a show car with a similar paint job, and Raven had just looked amused and told the boy not to stifle her enthusiasm. Now it seemed everything was finally ready, so she'd worn her new helmet and packed the matching jumpsuit she'd bought into a knapsack to bring to work today, so she could change as soon as she got to the workshop for her first ride.

Nam was just finishing a cheeseburger when the policewoman pulled up in the parking lot they'd agreed to meet at, and she threw a quick thumbs up before binning her trash and pulling on her goggles and helmet. They exchanged greetings over the built in radios and then they were off, the sexaroid keeping her speed down (for once) to what the weak scooter's electric power train could manage.

Of course, the loaner she'd gotten from the Doctor when her original bike had proven unrepairable and she'd doubled Nene's order wasn't any formula racer. Though mechanically sound it wasn't up to what a motorhead would call real speed, and it was painted an unflattering muddy brown. Her new bike, like her old one, would be golden yellow and pearl grey, with just a bit of filigreed pinstripe for detailing.

Wanting to forget about the major news item of the day for a while, Nene turned to a more personal topic: her recent experiments in dating. "Jeez, this whole 'guys' thing is just way too troublesome," she complained. "Sure, they're fun to look at and a few can even talk about something besides baseball and sumo wrestling, but let them get somewhere as private as a dark restaurant or try some mouth-to-mouth, and suddenly they're all hands and only one thing on their mind. Honestly, is everyone just out for a quick fling these days?"

The other woman's laugh was naughty and Nene could just imagine her friend's wink as she replied, "I think you're complaining to the wrong girl about that one - I'd like to find someone to be serious about, but I enjoy the entrees while I wait for the main course. Do you mean to say you still haven't done *that* yet?"

The redhead scoffed, asking, "With who? Going out with Mackie that one time was like being with my little brother, and Leon just took me to a Jade Lee movie and a yakisoba cart. And Hawker from the Records department stood me up, the jerk! He still hasn't figured out how his laundry detergent got replaced with concentrated bleach, though."

"Nene!" the speedster protested, scandalized. "You didn't!"

"Nope," she replied smugly. "The spell I used was even more effective than that. Every stitch he owned turned bright, stark white!"

Nam laughed, then complained, "You're evil. You'll be wearing a black cape and explaining your plan to take over the world next."

"I am not! Even if it's white, none of those clothes will ever stain or turn transparent in the rain. More importantly, my plan for world conquest is genius! By having a 'free ice cream' holiday declared, I can easily sneak in and seize power while everyone is home the next day with a tummy ache! No sparkly-smile hero could stop ME! Ohohohohoho!"

The sexaroid laughed again, teasing, "If there was a 'free ice cream' holiday, the only one sick the next day would be you, because you'd devour it all before anyone else had a chance. You forget, I've tried sharing the Super Ziggy-Pig 32 Flavor Sundae with you, and I kept track, the only ones I even got to taste were chocolate banana, mint chip, passion fruit, moose tracks, French vanilla, and caramel swirl."

The good-natured argument over ice cream flavors and relative appetite lasted until they rolled into the garage bay, and Mackie waved to the pair from across the street before going back to polishing the final coat of wax on the nose of his latest monster, an even larger scratch-built design than last time with a clear family resemblance to the Highway Star. Judging by the music blaring over the shop's speakers he'd been thinking of a song by the same group as his last naming influence as well in dubbing it the Speed King.

Who cared about that, though, when there were a pair of cycle-sized objects covered by tarps, parked for maximum dramatic effect just inside the bay door where the slanting afternoon sun would give the best lighting when they were revealed? Doctor Raven looked up at the sound of their arrival, giving whatever he was doing under the hood of a silver subcompact car a few more twists of the wrench before setting the tool aside and coming to meet them. He wore the smile of a craftsman about to reveal his latest masterwork as he wiped his hands on a rag and stepped between the shrouded bikes, getting a good grip on each cloth.

"So, ladies, ready to meet your new kids?" he asked warmly. "I think you'll be pleased."

Fluffing her hair free of helmet induced trauma, the grinning policewoman chirped, "Since it's you, I'm sure it's fine. So let's see them!"

"Kids these days, no patience," the irascible old gent mock-grumbled, relenting as the redhead literally bounced with excitement. "Oh all right, here you go."

Flicking his wrists with a flourish and stepping back so the cloths would come completely off, the latest two Raven Customs were revealed. Both rushed over to examine their new bikes, cooing over them like puppies before looking at each other and giggling over their own antics. With a silent agreement, they turned then and each grabbed one shoulder of Raven's coveralls, leaning in to lay a quick peck on his lined cheeks.

Seeing his surprised reaction Nene snickered into her hand, then whispered in Nam's ear, "I wish we had a camera, I don't think I've ever seen him blush before!"

Schooling his face into its usual grumpy manner, the mechanic complained, "It's not nice to tease an old man. Go on, you're already paid up and the tanks are full, so off with you." His cheeks were still a bit red as he buried himself under a hood once more, though, and safely invisible the laureate mechanical engineer smiled to himself. *At my age, I'll take what I can get.*

The good mood from racing around on HER OWN new motorcycle had lasted little longer than it took to wish Nam farewell and head for the meeting Sylia had called that evening. By the time she arrived she was all but breathing fire, and seeing the newsfax headline lying on the common room table was enough for her temper to boil over. 'KNIGHT SABER DEVILS GIVE AN AUDACIOUS WARNING!' it cried. 'IN THREE DAYS AT THE TINSEL CITY BANK WE WILL APPEAR!'

Her anger literally burned the flimsy pages to ashes as the redhead's battle aura appeared around her hands, hot with rage. "I CAN'T STAND IT!" she growled, bringing her aura back under control as the plastic strap of her pager bracelet began to blacken as well. Slamming her palms together with a crack, the incensed half-spirit exclaimed, "This makes us look like we're INCREDIBLY evil!"

"We don't just look evil, we are evil, as far as everyone is concerned," Linna told her. *And after I got wild, it's all too easy for people to believe,* she thought, morosely.

Guessing at the real target for the former gym instructor's bad mood, Mackie hastened to say, "In any case, we can't just sit back and let them pass!"

"Let's do 'em, Sylia," Nene agreed. "This 'warning' is an obvious challenge to us. A martial artist can't refuse a challenge! Let's blow 'em away!"

"It may be somebody's idea of a joke," Linna weakly contended. "Besides, you're the one who's always complaining about your father using that 'can't refuse a challenge' line."

Just as irritated in her own way, Sylia stood up from her chair and paced over to the window. "This incident has made Genom even more nervous. Furthermore, while we no longer use those suit designs for the most part, the evidence suggests someone with much knowledge about us is responsible. It's imperative to consider what that means."

Incredulous, Nene complained, "Come on, Sylia, they're messin' with us. Let's trash 'em! Right, Priss? Challenging us is a really obnoxious -"

"I quit. Sorry," the downcast Priss interrupted, still leaning against the doorframe as she had since arriving.

"-thing to do. Right! Quit! ... EH!" The redhead's rant crashed to a halt as her mind caught up with the conversation, and she gaped at the musician.

"What do you mean, Priss?" Mackie exclaimed.

Softly, she continued, "I only came here today to tell you that." Pushing off from the wall, she opened the door and turned to leave.

"Wait, Priss!" Linna called, in stereo with Mackie. Distraught, she continued, "Is it what I did? If it's me, I should be the one who leaves, not you."

Eyes shadowed under her bangs, the singer paused with her hand on the doorknob. "It's not- I don't blame you, you had no control over what happened. I should have got Sylvie to help before she died... At least you got her out of the DD alive, instead of standing there like a lemon. I just... I can't do this any more."

As the door clicked closed behind their friend, Sylia held out one arm to quell the protests. "She's still grieving for Sylvie," she explained. "It's understandable."

"What'll we do, Sylia?" Linna asked. "It wouldn't be a problem with Priss, probably, but without her we're at a disadvantage."

"There are contingency plans, after all," the Knight Sabers' leader reminded them, "We'll just need to be a little cautious."

Largo would have preferred to have their meeting inside - the old chapel's tall windows let long patches of moonlight enter to lie in stripes across the pews, draping his form in folds of light and shadow, and the drama of such a setting felt more appropriate for someone of his greatness. He'd even spent a few hours in contemplation of the crucifix above the altar and felt he'd gained valuable insights... though mainly of mistakes to avoid in his own ascent.

For now however, he needed to maintain the appearance of caring for his followers, and so he left those shadowed halls as he sensed his contact's arrival in the graveyard outside. Even so, he cut an impressive figure with the cool moonlight lending his white silk hair a mystical glow, and winking from segmented golden irises.

Coming to a halt beside the woman, Magnus cast a momentary glance at the modest headstone, like many others in that field its inscription and bas relief of a phoenix taking flight still crisp and new. He'd seen it several times before of course, and the only meaning it held was as a means to control his cat's paw, so his patience quickly waned. Still, his voice was as gentle and caring as he could easily make it as he asked, "So, 'Millie,' how did you fare today?"

The pale woman remained silent for a few seconds more before giving a ritual clap and turning to face him. She produced a small binder and handed it over, Largo eagerly flipping it open to see the photograph clipped inside and look over the information on the facing page. "That's his schedule for the next week, will it do?" she asked hesitantly.

Largo scanned the list of appointments once more before snapping the cover closed, face twisted into a cruel smirk of anticipation. "Well done, Hyatt," he purred. "Once we have Genom's pet Defense Minister, Callahan, along with the new combat buma slated for illegal exportation, even Quincy will be forced to give me what I want."

An incoming videophone call preempted further response, and discerning its origin he routed a copy to Hyatt's recently implanted transceiver as well. The signal stabilized to reveal the white Knight Saber hardsuit standing in a heavy-duty buma recharge alcove, the blue and green suits just visible as well in their own niches to either side. If that wasn't enough to prove its falsehood, the voice it produced was male, gravelly, and overlaid with the metallic tones of a combat buma's synthesizer. "Largo-sama! We bombarded the data network with the challenge as you directed sir," it reported.

Magnus acknowledged the statement with a barely perceptible nod, then threatened, "Make no mistake: finish them off. Do not fail!"

The Sylia impersonator barked an affirmative and cut the transmission, leaving the two biomechanoids alone with their thoughts in the night's stillness again.

Finding her resolve, the enhanced sexaroid set her jaw and firmed her brows. "Now we can finally avenge Sylvie, right?"

Stepping closer, he laid a hand on her shoulder. "That's right, Hyatt. We cannot allow those evil people to get away with killing your dear friend Sylvie, and who made Nam and Anri disappear."

Hyatt closed her eyes, whispering, "I'm glad."

Largo pasted on a smile, telling her warmly, "Soon, you'll be truly free. Just a little longer."

Choked with emotion, Hyatt folded into his embrace, nuzzling into the tall man's chest. "Oh, Largo!"

Behind her, the fresh bouquet on Sylvie's grave tipped over and the incense burner went out again, even as the warm expression fled Magnus's face in favor of a smugly satisfied contempt, flint eyes cold and calculating.

Priss's thoughts wandered as aimlessly as she herself did, riding the Megatokyo streets without bothering to outpace normal traffic, or even seek the faster, elevated highways. Indeed, picking her way through twisty little streets, all the same, seemed to suit her mood perfectly. She wondered if she'd be eaten at last by her fears. *No,* she told herself, *it's not fear... I just can't go on as I was, hating buma and killing them at every opportunity. Not after Sylvie...*

There it was again! On the sidewalk, a flash of a girl in blue and white riding leathers ducking down an alley. Cursing viciously at the other pedestrians to move out of the way, she cut the front wheel hard over and followed, gunning the bike into the narrow side passage. She had to kick the occasional trash can away before running into them with her knees, but she kept up as much speed as she dared, chasing the flitting shadow at the far edge of her headlight beams. Loose garbage made her rear wheel skid as the alley turned, sliding until it squealed against the wall and sparks scraped from the rear turn signal housing on that side, but her reflexes held true and ever so slowly the singer gained on her dark-haired quarry.

Suddenly, the walls were gone again, and she had to brake hard to avoid a chattering crowd standing in the street, rubbernecking past a cordon at the AD Police troops gathered around the next block, at the foot of the Tinsel City Bank. Seeing the suspicious looks the N-Police officers manning the barricade were throwing her way, and not any sign of her ... Target? Hallucination? ... Lover? Priss scowled and drove half a block away down the street before parking to brood over her thoughts. She punched the gas cap halfheartedly before bracing her chin in one palm.

"Did you love my mother?"

Jerking in shock at the familiar voice, the ex-Saber twisted around in the saddle. Though she'd heard no footsteps, the person she'd been chasing had somehow come up behind her. The cycling suit was the same, and the hair, but this girl was a bit too short and slight, her eyes were strawberry pink instead of amber, and there was something different if still familiar in her jaw line... But those details washed away as her eyes watered with unshed tears, and were ignored in the face of memory and desperate longing.

"What? Sylvie... I don't understand," the distraught musician choked out.

"I have memories from both of you, so I know how she felt, but yours are too old... You were so cynical, had so much hatred for buma. Did you love her, or was it just a fling?"

Too practical to let herself live in fantasy, Priss forced herself to accept those differences, to look into the face of her dead love with those deep pink eyes and her own jaw. Well, she tried to accept it... Sylvie's last words echoed again in her mind. *Priss... just one more... be kind to 'r... child...*

*'Our...' was the missing word, 'our?' Our child? Somehow...* Overcome she looked down, tear drops falling at last to puddle on her bike's fuel tank. She answered hesitantly, "Yes."

Cocking her head, the specter pressed, "Which, 'yes?'"

Nearly inaudible at first but gaining in volume to a shout, as if to announce it to the wide, uncaring world, the tear-streaked musician whispered, "Yes, I hated buma. Yes, I had a fun time with... Your mom. Yes, I made love with her. Yes, *she* was a buma. Yes, I loved her! Yes, I still love her! YES!"

A few of the rubberneckers looking on where the street had been taped off turned to see what the shouting was about, some taking snapshots as a pair of hot chicks hugged in the middle of the sidewalk, but most turning back to the stakeout at the end of the block. The strawberry eyed girl didn't care, and Priss didn't even notice. "I'm sorry, Sylvie. I love you," she sobbed, repeating it like a magic spell against sorrow, "I love you, I-love-you-I-love-you-I-love-you, don't make me be alone again, I love you..."

The other girl clutched her tight but asserted, "I'm not Sylvie, Priss. She truly did love you, but she also wanted to be totally free, to only rely on herself. I want to be with you, to rely on you and let you rely on me so we never have to be apart, and Sylvie couldn't have tolerated that. Will you let me be with you, this time? Masah mahnyee, ni, ichi, go?"

"... yes."

215 pulled the embrace closer, melting into her once-again mistress, or rather, melting and shifting around her. The nanoweave riding jumpsuit was reabsorbed, and flawlessly simulated skin parted, the nanite mass beneath flowing around the singer's body like a gentle caress. Solid components vanished away until all that was left was a thin protective sheath beneath her clothes, and a small pack over her shoulder blades where the Guardian's main processor and power supply rode.

] Third stage link reestablished.  
>] Tadaima, Priss-dono.<p>

"Okaeri nasai, kiddo," the former Knight Saber replied quietly.

Leaning against a command APC in his link armor, Leon fidgeted in irritation... *I really hate this waiting,* he thought. *The only thing worse is when the shooting starts.* Deciding to check in with the sentries again, he snagged the tactical network handset just inside the open ramp and keyed the appropriate frequency. "This is Leon," he called. "How's it look out there?"

"This is point 01," the first post reported, "everything's fine right now... Wait a minute!"

Tension ratcheting up at the surprise in the officer's voice, Leon straightened and demanded, "What is it!"

A scream was his only reply, cut off by an explosion from the top of the 30-storey building, a huge fireball that threw chunks of flaming debris to arch over the street and break windows in the surrounding blocks.

The pilot of the aerodyne orbiting overhead broke in to the channel, announcing excitedly, "It's the Knight Sabers! I'm going in, attack formation SW-01!" As soon as the pupil tracking target reticule in his HUD showed the gun mount had slewed into position he triggered a long burst, kicking up sprays of dust and powdered concrete around the distant armored suits that stood arrogantly motionless amid the onslaught. The white suit extended one arm as the pilot broke off his attack run to circle around and drop its K-11 squad, sending a single palm-cannon blast into its fuel tank.

Exploding immediately, the flaming wreck plummeted out of the sky, actually crashing on top of Leon's APC far below, only barely giving the Inspector and his subordinates enough time to dash out of the impact zone... Most of them, anyway. Picking himself up from where he'd leapt and curled into a protective huddle, Leon snarled as he took in the damage, and heard the screams of some unlucky bastard who'd gotten drenched in burning jet fuel. "Shit!" he cursed. "It's all going to hell!" Forcing himself to his feet, he staggered over to the PMB parked nearby and threw a leg over the saddle. "Bailey, get the K-12S ready and launch!" he ordered, before triggering the mechabike's transformation to battleframe mode. "I'm going in too!"

Looking down at the police scurrying like ants with a kicked over hill, the white impostor scoffed scornfully and gloated, "Hurry, Knight Sabers! When you get here, it will be the end for you!" Then, because Largo's programming indicated it was the appropriate psychological intimidation tactic, it produced a sinister, full throated laugh.

"MUAHAHAHAHA!"

Priss and Niichigo had been about to get back on the cycle and leave when the ADP aerodyne exploded, the Guardian's now deep pink optic band seeming to slide out from under one of her partner's forelocks to rest over her eyes like a pair of wrap-around sunglasses. The view it provided immediately projected the path of the wreckage and zoomed in on the impact zone, Leon easily recognizable as he leapt out of the way and rolled into a covered position.

"Fuck, McNichol again!" the singer complained. *Well, I guess I do owe him for that time,* she thought.

]Combat modes are available whenever desired

"Yeah?" Another moment's thought, and the familiar, confident grin returned to the red-eyed scrapper's face. "Yeah... Let's waste those arrogant bastards, and square things up at the same time. Just gimme a hardsuit for now, kiddo, something that can fly."

]Acknowledged, Priss-dono. Personal battlesuit mode engaging with antigravity flight system.

Though the suit that flowed and molded itself around her was similar overall to the Guardian's original hardsuit form, it had a lot more white trim now, the base color was a lighter blue like Sylvie's bike suit had been, and the visor was now strawberry pink to match Niichigo's eyes. It no longer had the exposed golden circuit paths either, and the fin array on the back had folded more tightly together to support a pair of gravity rings in over-the-shoulder mounts like a motoslave's fans. Leaving her bike for now, Priss triggered the flight system and took off for the top of the closest similarly tall building, to get an idea of what was waiting on the top of the bank before leaping in.

Sylia had been concerned to find Priss's trailer dark and deserted, having wanted to have a talk with her Knight errant in hopes of persuading her to take a break if she must, but come back when she was ready. She really hoped the singer hadn't already left for good... Priss was a good friend as well as a good team mate, for all her sometimes prickly temper. Truth be told, Sylia could see a lot of herself in the woman as well, when she'd first begun planning her crusade against Genom and had burned for vengeance against her adopted father's murderers. She liked to think that fire had been banked into a drive for justice now, and in an ideal world she'd have helped the musician come to a similar resolution... But now, who knew what might happen?

She peered into a window just to be sure, breathing a small sigh of relief when she saw that nothing looked like it had been packed away, but before she could decide where to go next her cell phone rang with the 'Knight Sabers business' ring tone. ("We're knights of the Round Table, we dance when'er we're able. We're knights of the Round Table, we dance when'er we're able. We're knights-)

"It's me," she greeted, wondering yet again how Nene kept changing her ring tones.

"Big trouble!" the redheaded hacker announced over the scrambled line. "The fakers have shown up at Tinsel City Bank, just like their warning said! ADPolice were waiting. Now they're engaged in battle! What do... wait! I can hear Leon on the radio, he says Priss is there, fighting in that robot suit from Aqua City!"

Pulling the phone away from her face to give it a double-take, Sylia snapped, "What! Call Linna, and get ready to move!" Barely waiting to hear the policewoman's agreement, she stuffed the phone back in her purse and hurried into her Mercedes, then peeled out to head back to headquarters and get equipped.

Leon's battleframe went tumbling into the back wall of a rooftop stairwell access, smashed aside when he tried to regroup with Bailey in the K-12S and that unknown light blue hardsuit that had showed up to help them. He'd barely avoided losing his own hand when the PMB's lower left arm was blown off by the hit, and his fingers still stung where the control stick on that side had been ripped out of his grip.

Seeing the blue Knight Saber - it couldn't really be Priss, could it? - leveling her weapon gauntlet at his head, the Inspector called out, "Why...? Why! I don't buy it!"

Before his enemy could answer - or more likely, fire - it was itself bowled over by a wave of distortion, all but invisible against the muted ambient sky-glow of city light reflecting off smog. Following hard in its wake was the newcomer, somersaulting in to slam Blue into the roof with a heel drop. Having landed the first real hit on one of the rampaging Sabers, she spoke for the first time as well, growling, "Let's see how you fake bastards like some of this!"

Parts of its battered hardsuit shell crumbling away, the impostor growled and peeled itself out of the cratered roof, then burst out of the remains of its disguise, more than doubling in size to become a hulking black monster. Secrecy now a non-issue the other two did likewise, the fake White Saber suit revealing a red giant with numerous weapon hatches, while the fake Green became a heavily armored blue unit with gorilla-like oversized arms.

Priss and the two police pilots had taken advantage of the short pause to fall back and regroup, the heavily damaged K-suit swapping the magazine from its now useless right autocannon into the left, while Leon accepted an improbably huge cannon of a 'handgun' seemingly pulled out of nowhere by Priss to replace his lost carbines. "I've seen you before, haven't I?" he asked her. "Are you the real Blue Saber?"

*Looks like it's time to get heavy, Masamune,* Priss thought to her partner, before answering aloud, "I... am not a Knight Saber. What they're doing... I can't be a part of that." Even as she spoke, extra armor plates appeared as well, forming an angled barrier over her chest and shoulders, the familiar cluster of blades on each arm, and stabilizing additions on the lower legs. Eyeing the revealed faces of their enemies, she taunted, "Damn, you are three UGLY mofos..."

Rather than deign to answer, the red hyperbuma extended the heavy laser array built into its forehead and fired at Bailey, who managed to fire the bulky mecha's thrusters and dodge into the air just barely in time. Seeking to counter attack while the buma recovered he brought the right arm with its integral autocannon up, but the buma was gone - he never even saw it where it had leapt above him for an overhead smash, which destroyed the flight pack and slammed the heavy Armored Trooper down as if it was no more than a volleyball. The black hyperbuma followed up, first with a hooking kick that picked the suit up on the rebound and then with a pile driver punch that went straight through cockpit and pilot and into the metal of the roof. It roared triumphantly as it pulled its arm back out, and flicked away some of the gore.

"YOU BASTARD!" Leon shouted, swinging the gun - almost as large as his entire battleframe - around with a faint hum of gravatics. Drawing a bead with its built in imaging scope, he pulled back the trigger. It turned out to be an oversized mass driver similar to his StoMACH, but one which fired rounds as big as a dog food can instead of thumb-sized grenades. The black hyperbuma skidded back a good ten feet as the massive supersonic round collided with it, then another and another. With his original target knocked down and hidden by a cloud of concrete dust, the policeman switched to the red one, intending to keep it too busy to set itself and use its ranged weapons.

Priss meanwhile had engaged the bestial blue hyperbuma hand to hand, Masamune's strength and heavy armor an easy match even for the most melee-focused of the enemy trio. They traded blocked blows for a few seconds until Priss missed her footing on the increasingly damaged rooftop and the buma managed to knock her back. Rather than follow up this time, it leapt away to try to recover, the red and black units following suite as the cannon she'd leant to Leon was out of ammunition.

All three were heavily battered, and as the building's edge crumbled under one heel the red hyperbuma asked, "HB-01, what do we do? There's nowhere left to run..."

Unit One, the black hyperbuma leader, calculated for a moment, then commanded, "HB-00, draw their attention. When you do, HB-02 and me will escape!"

The blue hyperbuma protested, "What? No! Why the hell am I replaceable!"

HB-01 growled, "That's an order!"

"It's the end for you, fakes!" Priss had taken the now-useless mass driver back, most of its components stripping away and vanishing, replaced by a different arrangement as the basic frame was converted for a shoulder mount and became a four-vaned resonant energy cannon now that it would have Niichigo's main power supply to draw on once more. Even as she spoke, small orange lightning bolts were playing between the four poles as it charged.

Not in the least liking the look of that, HB-01 commanded, "Now!"

Still angry at being made the sacrificial goat, HB-00 roared and smashed one of the nearby supports for the bank's huge rooftop sign, then leapt to the attack. Before it even reached the apex of its jump, Priss's energy blast swallowed it, only a dark smudge remaining in the center of the beam, and after a moment not even that as it cut through the atmosphere and continued on into outer space. HB-01 and HB-02 jumped off the side, thrusters extending from their shoulders and calves to fly away, but the former Knight Saber was having none of that, not after their murderous attacks on herself, the police, and the targets they'd hit in the course of their impersonation.

"Forget it!" she shouted, taking a second shot with the energy cannon to dispose of HB-01 before retracting it for better mobility. Extending both arms, she fired a reverse-polarity gravity pulse, pulling HB-02 back to the roof like a yo-yo. "You won't escape!" A long, sharpened fin extended from the cluster lining her right arm, and as the final hyperbuma came tumbling down she swung up to meet it, ripping the mechanoid in half from right hip to left shoulder. She stared blankly at the upper section as the red glow faded from its eyes and orange synthetic blood poured out to pool on the rooftop, Masamune automatically hiding away the bulky extra armor and actuators now that there was no need for them. Finally she shook herself and walked slowly toward the roof edge herself, preparatory to jumping over and leaving.

"Hey, hold on," Leon commanded. "This time I really do have to ask you some questions. For one thing, if you're not a Knight Saber, why were you so upset about these fakes, and why were you with them in Aqua City?"

Priss looked back over her shoulder at the ADP Inspector in his battered knockoff Hurricane, her red-pink visor glinting in the light of the still-guttering fire where the red hyperbuma's laser shot had set the building's tar weather sealant alight. "Why help them...?" she asked contemplatively. "Why help you? And I wonder... Did you ever see me? ... Does anyone?"

Shaking her head free of such existential bullshit, Priss walked to the brink. *Let's get out of here.*

] Acknowledged.

And then, she stepped off.

] Cycroder form engaged, Priss-dono.

"WHAT!" Leon rushed forward, though he had no idea what he could do if the blue Not-A-Knight-Saber didn't have some way to deal with the thirty storey drop. There was nothing but the street and the rest of the ADP below, but looking outward he could just make out a crouched figure on some kind of ring-shaped flying device silhouetted against the city lights before it sped away.

He hadn't even caught his breath before an urgent call came over the tactical net, from a harried sounding Daley. "Leon, Leon!"

"What now!" he barked, flexing his left hand experimentally. At least it didn't feel like he'd pulled the muscles seriously or anything, but it was still damn sore. That thought in mind, as well as the reports and letters of condolence he was going to have to file after this, the tired Inspector complained, "This one just finished, you know!"

"Someone's kidnapped Defense Minister Callahan!" his partner explained insistently. "The kidnappers are escaping via the freeway. What do we do?"

Leon thumped his head against the padded rest in the PMB cockpit. "Us? Where the hell are the N-Police! Kidnapping is their jurisdiction. Never mind, get an aerodyne ready, I'll go!" *What the hell!* he griped to himself. *The N-Police weren't this useless before I transferred, I know it! Hell, there's two other ADP field units, and the entire Second Division in Yokohama, why are they dumping this on me!*

Watanabe's respectful summons away from the still looming catch-up work in her Black office was a relief to Katherine Madigan in three ways - it meant a break, of course, and it meant reminding her that that idiot Kuroma really was gone for good, and hopefully it would mean he had meaningful progress to report on whoever might be leaking information. With Kuroma she'd have looked over his shoulder and made all the decisions... It seemed his true unsuitability for more than an assistant position had been kept under control more than anything by her creeping unwillingness to delegate. Watanabe she'd found to be able for whatever she'd asked with only minimal oversight while she got everything his predecessor (in this case, quite literally) had screwed up straightened out.

Greeting her with a nod that was more of a seated bow, Taro got straight to business, as he knew his senior preferred. "I've finished that data check, Ms. Madigan."

"All rright, put it on scrreen." The lavender-locked executive stifled an unladylike snort as the file photo that appeared was none other than the same girl who'd made her instincts tingle back at the beginning of this very long day. "Millie Jackson... It is her after all... But why?"

Just then, an alert appeared in a corner of the screen, and Watanabe opened it in a side window, scanning it briefly and reporting, "Ms. Madigan! Message from buma Omega-4, in pursuit of the kidnappers."

As the communications went live a videophone stream appeared, showing Omega-4's viewpoint as it followed the kidnappers on an empty stretch of highway. Katherine gritted her teeth seeing that it had Genom corporate registration plates, then commanded, "Take them out, car and all!"

"But the minister!" the pursuing buma protested. He'd been a member of Callahan's protection detail for just over a year, but hadn't quite come on shift when the attack went down. All he'd been able to do was commandeer a car and follow, and now...

"It doesn't matter!" Madigan yelled, slamming her fist against the console. "He's just a puppet! If we don't seal his lips, it'll be big trouble!"

BU-55C/B-1337-omega-4 resigned himself to obeying the higher-ups, and reported, "They're slowing down, this is the moment!"

"Strike!" barked Madigan.

"Attacking... I begin!" Accessing his offensive driving skillchip, the buma downshifted and hit the accelerator, the police-model diplomatic escort's heavy duty power train letting it catch slowly up with the speeding company sedan.

Seeing the pursuing car begin inching up on them again in the rear view mirror, Hyatt announced softly, "Here it comes!"

Lounging in the back seat beside the Minister, who'd decided to keep silent after protests were met with a punishing gut punch that had him struggling to breathe, Magnus Largo pronounced unconcernedly, "It's a Genom operative. It seems Millie Jackson is also finished today, Hyatt."

Dismayed, she wondered, "How did they find out about me?"

Though she undoubtedly meant it as a rhetorical question, Magnus deigned to answer - knowing the unknowable was part of a messiah's image, after all. "They've put Bouwer under the Deep Psychology Scanner." At least, he would have, and it's not as if it would matter if it was true after tonight played out. "All right, pull over."

The ADP aerodyne pilot had been scrambling around the city like a scalded cat - first he'd had to drop off his Armored Trooper squad to contain a rogue B-class that had gotten into a Yakuza weapons cache in the warehouse district, then it was air support against a runaway automaid throwing shoes at people from where it had climbed up a flag pole, then observation for the N-Police while they vectored in enough cruisers to box in a different car chase on the other side of Megatokyo - it was like the whole town had gone nuts tonight!

Now it was ferrying one of the Department's top ranking field officers in an otherwise solo pursuit of kidnappers who'd targeted the Defense Minister himself. *Nuts! Totally nuts!* Checking his instruments and comparing their location to the radioed reports of the suspects', he announced, "We'll catch up to them in three minutes."  
>"THREE!" Leon's temper was running damn short at this point, with a half dozen of his troops dead or seriously injured at the bank and the adrenaline crash from the battle he'd just finished. "You'd better do it in one!" he shouted, flipping the flyboy off.<p>

"That's crazy!" the pilot blurted, unintentionally continuing his previous thoughts aloud. *Damn... Well, at least Leon isn't the type to hold...* A brilliant flash of light up ahead caught their attention. Facing forward again, he was just in time to see a glowing trail dissipating, as if a ruler-straight lightning bolt had struck.

"W... What was that?" the Inspector wondered.

Standing a dozen feet or so from the burning wreck that had been following them, Largo smirked and held out a hand as if inviting any survivor to come get some more. Instead, there was a metallic screeching and snapping, then the dead buma driver's armored skull ripped off its neck and smashed through the crazed window to land evenly in the outstretched hand. After a moment, its optics reactivated to serve as a videoconferencing camera for its killer.

Cynthia was riding along in the just finished Knightwing, a surplussed Wayne Technologies 'Skycarrier' aerodyne that had been heavily modified with active and passive stealth systems and the support equipment necessary to serve as a mobile base of operations for the team. Between her clairvoyant abilities and healing magic, not to mention the way she'd disappeared the last time she was left alone during a major incident, she was far too valuable to leave behind, and should be safe enough staying in the aerodyne with Anri and Nam. Those two weren't usually a part of Sabers operations either, but the buma medic had been visiting for another magic lesson with her pilot friend, and with Mackie out looking for Priss on his new battlemover-class motoslave the only other option was to wait for Sylia to arrive before launching, which would have held them up even more.

Linna had made the call and Sylia had confirmed it, getting Anri in the pilot's seat and the Knightwing in the air to pick up the scattered team members faster. Sylia had driven her Mercedes Gullwing right up the lowered back ramp when they made a touch-and-go on the highway, while Nene dashed out to a rooftop helipad not far from the ADP headquarters in her nondescript motorcycle jacket and helmet and climbed aboard.

Now only Mackie was left to retrieve, when suddenly the little girl jerked and closed her eyes in concentration, her fairy companions twittering agitatedly. "Oh no!" she gasped a moment later. "The satellites are shooting! It's only a little bit ahead of Mackie-aniki..."

Without being asked, Anri pushed the throttles up to emergency power.

There had been a brief shot of some tall man getting out of the kidnappers' car, then the signal had gone dead. As it flickered and reconnected, Madigan snapped, "What is it? Is something happening?"

Rather than Omega-4, an amused voice noted, "Oh? A woman..."

"We're getting a video signal!" Watanabe announced, turning on the main screen overhead and routing it there.

The face that appeared was striking but unfamiliar, black eyes with gold irises under a snowy white mane, and framed by thin diagonal scars. "I am Largo," he announced, "the person who has Minister Callahan. I'll be with you shortly. I'm of a mind to meet directly with the Chairman."  
>Madigan could feel a sweat drop run down her cheek, a sign of the stress she was keeping at bay to think clearly. "So that's how it is. You'rre very surre of yerself. So what do ye want in exchange for the ministerr?"<p>

Again, that irritatingly smug smirk, this 'Largo' character absolutely convinced that he held all the cards. "Tell him 'OMS,' would you?"

Too shocked to keep her voice down, the woman shouted back, "The Over Mind Control System...? How in in the world!"

Less amused but no less arrogant, he replied, "Oh, so you know what it is? You seem like a sharp one, indeed. Well, we'll meet soon."

"Wha- Wait!" *How could that bastard know about the OMS!* Madigan wondered frantically. *Jackson had no access at that level. I've got to find the leak!*

"The signal has stopped," Watanabe reported, quickly muting the static. It seemed there was nothing for it but to wait and find out those answers in person.

Largo had crushed the destroyed bodyguard's skull with a magnetic pulse, directing it so that the grisly trophy burst open at the back and sprayed the contents away from his expensive suit. He snorted and started walking back to his own car, when a shot rang out. The sound of a hovering aerodyne rolled around overhead like distant thunder.

Hyatt screamed, "Magnus, look out!"

Largo paid little of it any mind, merely narrowing his eyes in annoyance as the puff of dust raised from the roadbed by the heavy caliber bullet drifted across his imported leather shoes. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw Leon's beleaguered Police Motorcycle Battloid, a new K-11 carbine clenched in its one remaining hand readjusting to cover him even as its shoulder mounted hover fans folded up behind it.

"ADPolice!" the battle-weary officer identified himself. "You'll come quietly if you don't want to be blown away."

Magnus turned slowly to face him, even as the aerodyne pilot found him with his spotlight. "Yo! Good one, Leon!" the pilot enthused over the radio, throwing a thumbs up for the camera.

Leon grinned back through his own video feed and returned the gesture, though with his left hand while the right kept a steady bead on the suspect. Facing front again, he ordered, "All right, open both hands and lie face down!"

Arrogant smirk returning in full measure, Magnus ignored the instruction, following the spotlight back to its source and raising one hand to point dramatically.

Incensed, Leon tightened his finger on the trigger slightly, shouting, "What are you doing, do as I say!"

Freaked out, the pilot gripped his controls and thought about dodging, even though there was no visible weapon on the bastard. Before he could make a decision, there was in instant of burning heat, then nothingness.

"No!" Cynthia's protest was heavy with despair, as the Knightwing rushed toward the confrontation. "It's different... He's faster! I can't make a shield in time!"

It might just have been a trick of only seeing it out of the corner of his eye, but Leon could have sworn the particle beam that blew away his air support had splashed as it hit, just for a moment, as if the light aircraft-grade ceramel could have ever withstood its searing force.

When he opened fire a moment later, there couldn't be any question - the bullets WERE stopping, just drifting to a halt in a faint bluish bubble around the suspect, that was suddenly all too familiar. As much as he hated to think it, Leon found himself wondering just what connection the Knight Sabers might have with this bastard, when the white one had produced similar effects each time she'd been seen since that incident with the Griffon months ago. *When that light blue hardsuit pilot said she couldn't be a part of what they were doing, was this what she meant? No, I don't believe it. Those fakes had to have been part of the diversions from the kidnapping, and it would point an arrow straight at the Sabers... They've always been on our side!*

It REALLY wasn't the time to have let his mind wander, not even a tiny corner of it. With no more than a lazy wave of his hand, Magnus tossed the levitating bullets back at his assailant, then ripped the gun out of his mecha's grasp and crumpled it into a ball. Loud pops and gouts of smoke burst out of it when the metal heated as it bent, cooking off the ammunition, even after he carelessly let it fall to the side. The PMB was caught in a vise-like grip as he stepped slowly towards it, left hand swinging, the right thrust casually in a jacket pocket.

Leon struggled with the unresponsive controls, then stilled and paled as the frame of the unit began to creak around him. *I didn't ever plan on going out like the Green Saber...* he thought with a whispered curse, as he felt the motoroid lift slightly into the air. That was why he was actually relieved a few seconds later when the armor and equipment ripped apart around him, dropping the ADP Inspector to the road to stumble to his knees.

Then, with a rustle and a short burst of wind, Largo was in front of him, an impossibly strong left hand closing on the back of his collar and hoisting him up, where it switched off with the right around his throat. "As high spirited as ever, aren't you, Leon McNichol?" he gloated, cocking his head to look down at the struggling policeman.

Taking some of the weight off his throat with a two-handed grip on the suspect's arm, Leon managed to gasp out, "You know... Who I am?"

"Mm-hmm. My associates love you to death, you see," the white-haired man told him, as if commenting on the weather. He chuckled and tightened his grip, growling "Die!" as the helpless man choked in his hand.

Another shot broke the moment, the thunderous boom of a vehicle-mounted weapon. Again the bullet hung in the air suspended in a pale blue glow and was banished back toward the shooter, then he tossed Leon after it. Stepping out of the pall of smoke from the crashed aerodyne a huge red and grey humanoid, easily as large as the DD but more evenly proportioned, nimbly caught the hurled policeman and couched him in the crook of an arm.

It took a moment for the dizzy man to regain his bearings, mumbling unintelligibly at a half heard question from the pilot, who sounded like he was no more than a kid. Remembering the Knight Sabers logo he'd seen on White's collar plate when he told her about the DD's bomb, then again on Blue when they double teamed it, he peered up at his rescuer - much like the shape-changing hardsuit he'd fought beside earlier that evening, it had none. *How many high-tech vigilantes are there in this town anyway?* he wondered blearily.

In the Highway Star's cockpit, Mackie was at something of a loss. The machine was working perfectly, everything he and Dr. Raven had designed it to be and more, and now here he was on the front line, where he'd always wanted to be beside his sister and their friends... alone. Worse, his cannon hadn't even scratched the human-looking guy in front of him, though he was obviously some kind of enhanced buma or bumaroid like Mason had been.

His indecision was sliced away with a burning blade of adrenaline as an urgent radio message came through from the Knightwing, Cynthia's anxious voice warning, "Mackie-aniki, the satellites! Run!"

He could see the control signals already in the radio spectrum analyzer overlaying his right side display, but he couldn't just leave Leon, and he couldn't outrun an energy weapon no matter how fast and maneuverable the Speed King's antigravity based flight system was.

Instead, he dropped the mecha to its knees and diverted all the power he could reroute into its force-charged armor plating, clutching the policeman close beneath the massive mecha, even as the terrible lightning of a man who'd be a god struck down once more to claw and melt the tarmac. The fire that had been dying down blazed up again as volatilized tar burst alight, the runny plastic mess that had been turn signals and trim strips here and there in the scorched-black mecha doing likewise as it settled slightly, still and quiet.

Largo snorted contemptuously, then got briskly back into his car, with no further need to look nonchalant in front of opponents.

The scene sparked a memory in Hyatt, of the way the shield she'd formed out of hull metal had burned as it tore through the atmosphere, the shock as it skipped across the water and crashed into the sand of a beach, the smell and feel of her synthetic skin frying and tearing away as she crawled free and down to the waves, desperate to cool off...

The sharp thump of Magnus's door closing snapped her back to the present. "I've taken care of the interlopers," he said. "Let's go, Hyatt."

"Ah! Y-yes..." she replied, still looking back in the mirror as she pulled out. Had that giant mecha just moved? She remembered the cat who'd brought her back to consciousness when she'd almost let herself slip away, there on the planet at last, and the only word that slipped past her lips was a whisper of "Kitty..."

* * *

><p>Continues in 10_BD_WOASS_Ch_<p>

* * *

><p>"the emperor was appeased" - "Slaves of the Lamp, Pt. I," the first chapter of Rudyard Kipling's book "Stalky and Company" opens on the main characters in the midst of planning a musical stage adaptation of Aladdin. They're up to the final scene, with one character dead in the middle of the stage, and need to get everyone standing and out front for the final bow so they can run the curtain down. The music, of course, is unknown to me as I don't know the drinking songs referenced as being what they set it to, but the lines the came up with to use were, "Aladdin now has won his wifeYour Emperor is appeased/I think I'd better come to life/We hope you've all been pleased!" sung, respectively, by the genie, the emperor, the merchant, and the whole cast. Being one of my favorite books, the line sticks with me and insists on coming out whenever justifiable. The book is available at Project Gutenberg, and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys stories of youthful shenanigans at the hands of fifth through seventh form public school students in the British Empire, set when the Sepoy Mutiny is still big news in Old Blighty.

the Ziggy-Pig super sundae is of course from _Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure_, and the flavors Nam lists are all available (at least sometimes, for passionfruit) at a nice ice cream shop called Rick's in Keene, New Hampshire. I recommend the place, as well as the Westminister Creamery in nearby Westminister, for EXCELLENT ice cream should you happen to pass through, the latter in particular made right there in the shop with milk from the owner's family dairy farm. Price per unit is on par or below Ben & Jerry's or Haagen Daaz, and worth it to support small businesses, ne?

Why keep Largo's plan the same, when I've gone to such lengths to change the... man? ... himself? No, it's not laziness, it's just that it's a good plan - if you're an egotistical megalomaniac who thinks everyone should bow down to you and can be forced to do so with measures that would work on yourself, were your mighty mightiness merely their puny puniness. Since that describes ol' Mags pretty well about now, the plan stands.

"Twisty little (passages), all alike" - a reference to the (in?)famous text adventure Zork, as is being eaten by a fear, or in more archaic terms a grue.

Oh, if only Vision had recorded "Say Yes" at this point in continuity! It would be so perfect for Priss's reconciliation with Niichigo!

Yes, I created 215's character design before realizing her first real appearance would be in the chapter corresponding to OVA 6, "Red Eye's." She has strawberry irises because Sylvie imagined her as the daughter of Priss and herself, hence she looks like a younger Sylvie with eyes similar to Priss, but lighter like Sylvie's amber irises. As for what constitutes "strawberry pink" take that light, Barbie-box girly pink and mix it with an equal amount of Priss Eyes crimson.

Tadaima - traditional announcement, "I've returned home!"

Okaeri nasai - traditional welcoming response.

'-dono' suffix - very formal and respectful, ala 'Lord' or 'Lady')

"Attack Formation SW-01" - that must mean, Straight in/Without strategy, cops 0 buma 1... At least, judging by results. Hence the pilot's idiot accent when I took the original notes, removed for the final edition, "Ayup yup yup, It's the Knaght Sabas all raght! I'm a'goin' in, attacky for-may-shun Ess Dubbleyer Ze-ro Wun!"

There's a music cue for Priss's big fight scene, but I decided to leave it out of the text. If you go to ..com it will play automatically. Lots of ownage in this one, actually, and lots of little plot twists that had me rubbing my hands in grinch-like evil glee. Writing that battle with the hyperbuma in a warped mirror of the canon Sabers' roles was but one of them.

2009-11-22 note: Alas, this site seems to no longer exist. What it did was take the words added between www. and .justgotowned and used them as captions on pictures of various people suffering violent misadventures such as getting kicked during a soccer game, mauled by a bear, flipping a race car, etc., while an audio clip played of a mens' chorus chanting "owned owned owned, you got owned." So much for that joke, I guess.

"A shot rang out. Thunder rolled. A woman screamed!" - all that's missing is "It was a dark and stormy night," ne?

Hyatt as (1990 movie style) Catwoman? Well, there's a middling-strong Bat-clan influence already, so I won't rule it out... but it's not terribly likely, either. And have I established a "trouble falls from the sky" theme yet or what?

Credits and further notes can be found at the end of the second half of the chapter.

EOF


	13. Chapter 6b

10_BD_WOASS_Ch_06b

2010-10-30 - a few more minor catches. It seems to be an annual event.  
>2009-11-22 - many much spelchekz, senor! Particularly in the second half.<br>2008-09-30 - I think I got it... I think I got it! Final battle in progress at last! And bustin' right out, too... this just became the first 3-part chapter, since I broke off notes and fic alike to hold this down to the 75Kb zone. Looking at them, everything these dates really pertain to is in fact in the third chapter.  
>2008-08-13 - numerous small edits, and still jackhammering the block on the beginning of that damn fight<br>2008-08-12 - worked on filling the gap in the Magnus battle  
>2008-01-19 - Bashed out Nene's Tower scene, but might have to hack the exposition some depending on feedback.<br>2008-01-18 - 10th anniversary writers block for the past three days. It figures. Minor edits only.  
>2008-01-15 - split into two files, began outline for final Magnus battle<p>

Continued from 10_BD_WOASS_Ch_

The heat was unbearable, beating against him like a physical force and driving the air from his body. He whined and writhed on his perch, mindlessly trying to get more of his body into the shadow of the battlemover's arms, and the thick, vile smoke burned his throat when he tried to get a new breath. His diaphragm spasmed with gagging, silent coughs, lungs too empty to make a sound, thrashing more frantically as he suffocated for the second time in minutes. Finally, a few eternal seconds later, Leon felt himself rising up from the fiery torment, carried away into clear, sweet, cooling air. He sucked it in greedily, flopping weakly onto his back as steel hands laid him gently out on the ground.

Mackie had hated waiting that extra minute for the car to leave, watching the policeman struggle in the Speed King's grip while he played possum, but there didn't seem to be anything else he could have done, when his cannon seemed useless and with no way to run effectively.

Laying his passenger carefully down, he transformed the unit and dismounted to give what first aid he could, though first making sure his helmet was on with the visor down to hide his face. Looking the policeman over, Mackie could see that the man's skin was burned red and raw, and his hair had singed as well. Even the tough synthetic of his armored PMB link suit had blackened in the heat and smoke, and one shoulder plate that had peeked out of the protective shadow of the battlemover's torso was deeply scored and carbonized. "Aw, man," the teen groaned, looking over the damage. "Are you okay, officer?"

Pulling his scattered thoughts together, Leon managed to groan and look at the person who'd literally pulled his fat out of the fire. He was no more than a kid, as expected from that voice. "A little crispy around the edges," he groaned, "but I think I'll make it. Ow, damn... What are you doing here?"

Under the helmet Mackie opened his mouth to answer, then closed it and tried once more, finally realizing that he couldn't go into any of the reasons with anyone outside their group. Helplessly, he settled for saying, "Just passing by... Who was that guy anyway?"

"Right," Leon countered, "Just passing by... in an unknown type of battlemover. As for the rest, I dunno... It all happened so fast..." He tried to sit up, but collapsed back to the ground with a pained grunt. "Son of a bitch! A monster should at least look like a monster... Ow..."

Reminded, Mackie stood up to unclip the small first aid kit from his leg, then crouched off to one side so he could unroll it and get the supplies he wanted.

Leon took a deep breath and forced himself up to his elbows, restricting himself to a pained hiss as he moved. "Listen, kid... Wherever you got that thing, this stuff is dangerous. Leave it to the A. D. Police! I don't want to look ungrateful, but this is our job, and I don't want to see you get involved and get hurt."

Squawking in alarm, the boy rushed back over, pulling on a rubber glove and squirting some white ointment onto it from a tube. "You're the one who's hurt, Leon-san! Just let me use this burn cream, it'll keep your skin from getting dried out or infected. You should really lie down and relax, too."

Surrendering to the careful if somewhat inexpert ministrations, Leon stubbornly stayed where he was, then pulled himself into a normal sitting position as the kid packed his kit away again and hopped back into the monster of a motorbike that had appeared, presumably a transformation like his own mecha had possessed or those ones the Knight Sabers used. He'd seen a few bikes that huge before, but not many... *Heck, some PASSENGER CARS are smaller, these days!*

Adjusting the medical kit again so it wouldn't bind against the cockpit Mackie heard the whine of approaching aerodynes, looking up to see a pair of them swooping closer on the skyline. He also saw the Knightwing's silent silhouette framed for a moment against the moon like some huge bat, and knew in any case it was time to go. "It looks like your friends are almost here," he noted. "They should be able to take care of anything more. Be careful Leon-san, it seems this guy isn't an ordinary buma like you usually see."

It wasn't until after he'd rolled away and the sirens of incoming patrol cars were audible that Leon realized the kid had known his name without being told. *Is anything simple in this crazy town anymore?* he wondered, gazing up at Genom Tower looming in the middle distance.

Madigan had hastened from the Black Vault to report personally to Chairman Quincy, the outrage on her face matched by his as she relayed the kidnapper's demand.

"What!" he sputtered. "That's out of the question. Giving him the OMS would result in him replacing Genom as ruler of the world!"

"But if word gets out from the minister of our violation of international law, the protests will come pourin' in!" she argued.

"Protests we can deal with," the aging blond man said with finality, "but they can only occur if the human species survives intact. Now, he's coming here?"

"Yes, sir. He was bolld enough t' call ahead."

Quincy rose and stood by his huge bay window, looking contemplatively out over the city he considered as good as personal property. "All right. Send him to me without delay. I'll see him."

"But sirr," she protested, "then, you'll be..."

The Chairman cut her off, saying calmly, "I want to see with these eyes, the bastard who's capable of engineering something like this."

Priss hadn't flown far on the oversized motorcycle-like form Niichigo called a 'cycroder' before circling back and into the same alley she'd started the chase through, the extra mass of the vehicle being quickly returned to the shunted space where it was stored so she could retrieve her bike.

*Although you like it, this machine isn't necessary, you know,* the Guardian's voice said softly. Priss had complained about how strange it felt having thoughts just appear in her head like words on a computer screen, so they'd worked out this compromise so it seemed like she was hearing Niichigo speak and replying, without constantly looking like she was talking to herself.

*Yeah, I suppose you could just stow it or something and form any kind of ride I'd wanna use,* she thought back, then wondered, *Say, how big and tough a rig can you be? If the Reps went on tour, it would be great if we could take my trailer. We'd save a shitload of zenii on hotel bills, for sure!*

Finding the image of the hired tractor cab that had originally parked it for her partner, Niichigo replied, *I could pull off a form that large, though it would be mostly hollow unless I assimilate some more material. As for the weight, it's not a problem unless you decided to fill the trailer with gold bricks, and hook a couple more on behind it.*

Priss snorted as she pulled out into traffic on the connecting street. "Yeah, right," she said aloud with a grin. "If I have that kind'a problem, I'll just buy a damn truck for real."

It didn't take her long to reach the apartment shared by Hikaru, Jack, and Eddie, the other members of the band, and even from the street she could hear them banging out the bars of 'Bara no Soldier.' From the sound of it, the song would be ready to introduce at their shows pretty soon... *Good,* she thought, without specifically directing it outward nor hiding it to keep private. *We should add some new material if we're gonna take it on the road... Unless the guys don't want to leave town, now that we've been getting better gigs.*

She let herself in with her copy of the key, joining in with the lyrics as they finished the first chorus. It was never the same as practicing on your own, even when she was the only one with a major vocal part. They worked that one out, then 'Crisis - Ikari o Komete Hashire' and took a stab at 'Rock Me,' which she'd only just finished writing.

By the amount of pounding from the apartments above and below when they finished, it had been a successful rehearsal ... Especially since the neighbors in the apartment to the side were out on their balcony listening in and shouted praise when they finally wound down.

Riding the emotional high and never one to mince words, Priss chugged her drink, belched, and came right out with it. "Hey, guys. You still all hot to go on tour? 'Cause I just quit my job, so I'm good if you are."

Jack dropped his drumsticks, and Eddie broke a string. Hikaru did a spit take, not that the cheap shit beer he always drank was worth more than that to begin with as far as she was concerned. "Are you kidding?" Eddie demanded, a bit hostile. "Because if that's a joke, you owe me a new high E. That stuff's not free, you know?"

"No joke, and what are you complaining about anyway, we played fuckin' Olympus two days ago, did you already spend all of your cut?" she chided.

Eddie just shrugged and pointed at the new amplifier he'd been using all day. She had to admit, not having to kick the old piece of junk they'd been using at practices every ten minutes or so when it cut out was a huge improvement, even if she hadn't really noticed until it was pointed out.

Jack punched Hikaru in the arm, demanding, "Pay up! You said she'd never go for it without bribes or blackmail, so show me the money, sucker!"

Priss gave pair of them a quelling glare, growling, "I don't see how it's so unreasonable for me to give full time to the band... That bet had better be going in the mixing board fund, got it?" Their mixing board wasn't total crap like Eddie's old amp had been, but Hikaru's cousin Kiba, their combination roadie and sound tech, complained about it after practically every show, and the jar where they were supposed to chip in to buy a new one had been on the kitchen counter for a good year and a half even if it did tend to get raided to pay for take-out at least once a week.

"Getting back to the point, do you guys want to set up a tour or not? We've finally started getting some better gigs here in town, so we could probably stay put for a while and keep building our rep in Megatokyo, just move around the districts and shit like that." *Shit is right,* she commented inwardly, *I don't want to hang around for Nene to guilt trip me over this.*

"Not just yes, but hell yes!" Hikaru whooped. "Do you know that there's Olympus clubs in Kyoto and Osaka as well? The owner and his managers were having a meeting in the back room when we played there, and they were frothing at the mouth to get us in at the other two locations! Even if we can't get any other gigs around them, they pay enough to cover the trips! I'll call Kiba right now, and tell him to get his van! It'll be tight with all the gear at once with us, but we've done it before..."

"Maybe you should actually set up the gigs first, you know?" the singer reminded her excitable bass player. "But don't worry about space. I can get a truck, so we'll take my trailer. Lots of room in there, and no need to rent a hotel room unless we get totally sick of each other or want some privacy."

"Shee-yit..." Eddie commented finally, as Hikaru got busy calling his cousin and the Olympus managers while Jack hit the internet and started copying numbers for more clubs around Kyoto and Osaka. "New tunes, two guaranteed big-ticket gigs, a real tour bus - well, trailer - and the way your vocals hit a new level since last winter? This is gonna fuckin' ROCK."

Madigan was already waiting with a quartet of security buma atop the golden orange steps of Genom Tower's main entrance when they arrived, gazing down upon them like the cold glare of the winter sun. Magnus Largo was undisturbed as ever, returning her gaze with confidence for a long moment, while Hyatt stepped out more hesitantly, latching onto his left arm and half-hiding behind Magnus's broad shoulder. Defense Minister Callahan leapt from the car more energetically than he'd been since his last tour on field duty in the JSDF, running around the back end of the car and up the steps. He came to a halt only a few paces below Madigan, brow dripping with sweat.

Torn between their theoretical and actual social precedence, he gave a sort of abbreviated bow, and apologized, "I-I'm terribly sorry! I was careless and got captured! But, don't worry, ma'am! I revealed none of the military's secrets."

Without the slightest change in expression, Katherine unfolded her arms and held a hand out toward the nearest buma. Taking a firm grip on the stubby pistol he placed in it, she raised it and shot a bloody third eye in the center of the minister's forehead, showering the steps with a spray of gore.

Hyatt, somewhat inured to such things after her own experiences, barely flinched, while Largo didn't so much as twitch. "So that's how it is," he smarmed. "To sacrifice even a minister... That's the Genom style, all right."

Having no patience for unnecessary banter and posturing, Madigan calmly handed the gun back her bodyguard and said, "The Chairman awaits. This way."

"Hmm hm mm MMM, hm HM mm mmm, hm HM mm MMM, ha hm mmm mm now..."

*Well, there's something I'd not have expected... The great and mysterious Largo, kidnapper of Diet members and blackmailer of Genom, humming along to elevator music, and oldies at that,* Katherine Madigan thought to herself.

As if reading her thoughts, the striking, white-topped man asked conversationally, "Do you recognize it? Over half a century old, 'I Want It All,' by the American band Queen. A noble sentiment, but the original version is preferable."

Madigan just snorted and quipped, "If they werre playin' 'Another One Bites the Dust' it might be a wee bit more appropriate." Not that she'd have even known who Queen was, if she hadn't investigated it after finding out that the executive express elevator's play list was chosen by Chairman Quincy personally, but there was no need to admit that.

As the elevator crested the roofs of the surrounding buildings, Hyatt pressed herself against the outer glass wall, absorbed in the view of the city stretching out around them like a brilliant galaxy stolen from the heavens. "It's lovely ... Everything is surrounded by light!"

Magnus seemed to agree. "Beautiful," he breathed. "Having once experienced such heights, a man might be unable to go back, even if he held the wisdom of a sage." He chuckled, his nigh-ever-present smirk widening into more of a true smile, if no warmer. "Soon all of this light will be ours," he told the former sexaroid.

"Confident, aren't ye?" the female executive commented. "Burrn this view into yourr eyes, it may be the last ye see." Any further discussion was preempted by the elevator arriving. Katherine stepped briskly through the doors, which opened directly onto a large lobby with Quincy's office at the far end. "Wait here," she told them. "I'll inform the Chairrman that you've arrived."

Magnus simply smiled and nodded graciously toward the oversized bronze doors, following her progress with less obvious senses than sight as Madigan stepped through and closed them behind herself. Then, for just an instant, the smirk on his face became a mask of fury. He quickly schooled his features back into the very image of confident superiority, but the burning anger remained in the depths of his obsidian eyes, gold irises flashing like bared blades.

*IMPOSSIBLE!* Sylia's head snapped around as that annoying voice sounded in it again. *All the information said that old fool of a chairman was here, in his office! Well, if he wants to play hide and seek, I'll just tear this tower apart around his ears.*

Interesting, it seemed her "admirer" had suffered a bit of a shock, and thought a little too loudly. Alarming, as well - if most of the myriad employees of Genom hadn't been relatively innocent, honest workers for its publicly acknowledged products and services she'd have gone for more extreme measures long before. "Anri," she called to their guest pilot, "Head for the top of Genom Tower. It's ironic, but we're going to have to save them from themselves. Nene, how many portals can you open, one after another?"

Such a question wasn't exactly a surprise, even without knowing about the foreign thoughts she'd picked up - Mackie had called in a few minutes before to say the car he was tailing had arrived at the Tower main entrance but he hadn't been able to save Minister Callahan, who'd probably been in cahoots with the zaibatsu anyway given how he deferred to the woman who met them. It was more the apparent non sequitur that puzzled the redhead. "Eh? I don't know... it's easy, so probably a whole lot..."

Sylia's face had taken on the cold mask her team had come to recognize as a sign of dispassionate calculation, the weighing of risks and objectives, plans and situations, tactics and strategy. As usual, it lasted only a few seconds before she had arrived at an operational plan and gave her orders.

Largo strode forcefully into the palatial office as the doors opened, eyes narrowed in anger. "So, you want games, old man? All right, I'll play along for now... but I'm not sure you'll like the stakes."

"Rather an impressive looking sort, aren't you," Quincy noted in his rumbling basso, "even if you do talk in riddles. I've heard your request from Madigan, here. Mind if I make one of you? Why do you want that thing?"

"Cyberdroids are beings which humans created," Largo began, eyes closed and head bowed, speaking with the fervor of a true zealot. "Ones with the potential to be a new species. You people treat them as nothing more than merchandise. It is only right for me to have the OMS. It is too much for corrupt, ignoble Genom," he declaimed, before raising his head and tightening his voice for a more direct attack, "- and especially for you, old man."

"Watch your mouth!" Madigan snapped. "We'll have none o' that!"

"Enough," the Chairman cut her off, unperturbed. "I'll make a deal, Largo was it? Come work for me. You've said enough about your ambitions. I can use a man with your talents. If not..." He gave the guards lining either side of the office a significant look, all eight of them taking the signal to draw their pistols.

The ones on the left all held them in their left hands, interestingly enough, so that the guns were always on the far side of their bodies from the desk and the man behind it. Largo might have been impressed at the effort shown in finding all left-handed guards for half of the detail, except that they were all buma and their handedness was a simple matter of programming. Hyatt stepped closer to his back again, while Magnus was amused by the difference between the faith the old man seemed to show in trusting his welfare to his mechanical dolls, how little actual threat they were to the intruder they now faced, and the real fact of Quincy's preparations to insure his physical safety - there was only one human in this room, and she might be the only one who didn't know it given that he knew Hyatt's more recent improvements included advanced senses. He had to chuckle at the thought.

"It seems ye've slipped your moorrings, Largo," that lone human said incredulously.

Ignoring her entirely now, Magnus opened a new gambit. "Let me show you something interesting. On the Multivision, bring up the Genom Towers around the world."

Irked at being so lightly dismissed, the Irishwoman demanded, "What are ye planning now?"

Again Quincy called for restraint, saying simply, "Enough. Do as he says."

With a used car salesman's grin, Largo announced, "And now, the show continues. To start, the tower under construction in the capital of Australia, Sydney!"

The sun was painting the sky from just below the horizon as Dr. Juli Anderson approached the new Genom tower in the bay. It was barely half complete, but already saw use as offices, labs, and meeting halls for nearly ten thousand people a day. She herself was not usually one of them, but the clinic had sent her to a dog and pony show about the latest Realskin prosthetics being held by one of the subsidiary companies housed in the main tower.

She paused to adjust the little koala-styled Personal Assistant buma she called Mercury the Wing-Eared Messenger where it clung to the right arm of her deep rose business suit when it wiggled a bit, pleasant tenor voice as confused as she'd ever heard as he said, "Caution... General warning 22: Irregularities detected. Self scan shows nominal status... Shall I initiate a diagnostic upload to the service network?" A sparkle in the sky caught Juli's eye and distracted the young surgeon. Not used to seeing stars so late in the morning, she glanced up...

... And a line of incandescent death struck down, ripping into the half-built arcology and destroying it utterly. The blast tossed rubble through the air as material closer to the impact point flashed into plasma and exploded outward. One huge chunk splattered the greying physical therapy department head from Queensland General she'd been walking beside into a messy smear and bounced, skipping over Juli as it tumbled before doing the same to the senior clinician from the Woomera Institute of Cybernetics a pace behind. Then the dust rolled down and there was nothing more to see.

Even when the air had mostly cleared, the next dozen or so hours were a muddled, grey, choking hell as she pulled and sweated and shoved and cursed and bled and dug and bandaged and struggled to save as many lives as she possibly could, until she literally collapsed from exhaustion and had to be carried away herself. Even so, she never shucked off her PA buma to save the strength needed to carry it.

Later, when her story came into the eye of the media, the little buma became something of a celebrity in its own right and in a roundabout way even led her to meet the man she'd one day marry, a German buma researcher named Joachim Mizrahi.

Even if he had known her story, or the stories of the tens of thousands of lives snuffed out or irrevocably changed by the opening act of his demonstration, or even the toll that would accumulate by the end of the day, Magnus Largo would not have cared.

In the Knightwing passenger cabin, Cynthia cried and wept uncontrollably and clung like a barnacle to Nam, the only other person left inside except Anri. Not understanding except that it had something to do with a satellite weapon attack that had affected huge numbers of people far away, the lavender tressed buma held the child close and rubbed her back, and tried to figure out if she'd really felt a strange tingle in her burgeoning mystical senses just as whatever it was had happened.

And then, she tried to convince herself she hadn't just felt another.

Katherine gasped, seeing the destruction wrought on the Sydney Tower's section of the screen, too shocked to speak as Largo's 'show' continued.

"Next in America, Illinois," he announced, flashes of light from the screens giving his white spikes a sickly blue-green sheen. "And in West Germany, Berlin!"

More beams rained down in Moscow, Reykjavik, and Toronto, without even the minor dignity of an acknowledgment, and Hyatt clasped her hands to her mouth in horror, staggering a few steps away from the charismatic man she'd thought she knew. Certainly, he spoke of making a new world where buma would all live free, but so much killing, death dealt on a whim just to prove a point! That had never been part of her dreams, but it would surely be figuring in future nightmares.

Even unflappable Quincy was shaken, slumping back in his chair and gasping out, "Wh-what have you done?"

Face shadowed by the light of the screens behind him, Magnus gave a devil's smile and replied simply, "My will."

Straightening, rigid with shock at the incredible waste of resources for a mere demonstration, both human and material, the Chairman exclaimed, "You impossible asshole! You mean you have a direct link with the orbital particle beam satellites?"

"Exactly," Magnus answered. "If I desire it, my children will destroy every Genom tower on Earth!"

Barely suppressing trembling at the ruin threatening the company he'd built with his own hands from little more than a temporary alliance of research departments in its precursors, the blond palmed his face. For perhaps the first time ever, he felt _old_, and at not even seventy! "I can't believe this..." he murmured, "The USSD was supposed to have stopped developing the Killer Dolls after 'that' incident!"

The window behind him to the left lit up with the yellow and orange of high explosives as a missile spiraled into it and detonated, but the heavy, armor-grade composite only cracked without breaking until being hit again, this time by a flying kick from the same huge battlemover that had so briefly interfered in the confrontation on the highway. A thin trail of exhaust still trailed from the box launcher mounted over one shoulder, and it was toting an even more ridiculously huge weapon than last time.

Even at that, the hole opened was too small for the huge machine and it backed off to get room for another blow. In the meantime, two smaller forms flitted through the breach, white and olive green armored suits that brought up their own weapons to cover the security team, Magnus and Hyatt. Then, with another shower of polycarbonate and carborundum chunks the window became a wide enough door for Mackie's Speed King to clamber through and level its ugly laser cannon at the black and gold eyed bumaroid, the aperture lens nearly six inches in diameter.

When the first missile had hit Madigan had simply acted, without thought of appearances or lese majaste; she'd grabbed Quincy's arm and dragged the surprisingly heavy old man out of his throne-like desk chair, shoving him behind her against the potted plant at the opposite side of the huge window and took a martial stance two paces ahead. A pair of slim vibroknives - her insurance that any corporate back-stabbing that became too literal would be entirely in her favor - let off a pleasant, clear D note in her hands as their normally inaudible frequencies produced harmonic interference. Only then did she take the time to pop her ears to equalize pressure after the air maintained at ground-level pressure had escaped out the broken window.

Hyatt had squeaked and trembled in place, obviously wishing she had a shoulder to hide behind again but no longer feeling entirely comfortable with Largo, herself.

The megalomaniac bumaroid had controlled his shock immediately, snatching the one small shard of aluminum oxide to fly toward him out of the air with nigh invisible speed and greeting mildly, "Ah, Sylia, and you brought your playmates. How nice of you to join us." Instead he channeled it into still greater anger at the disruption in his carefully laid scheme - the more so as he recognized the core of the weapon held on him, beneath the modifications to give it grips and targeting optics, as a Wayne Technologies anti-satellite laser, a weapon designed for use across thousands of miles to destroy orbital strike weapons with a single shot, whether from another space-based platform or even, with clear weather, directly from the surface.

Underscoring that point, the White Saber said commandingly, "Those strike satellites have been quite busy, perhaps you should give them a break. The next time we detect control signals from you, you'll be the one who gets burned!" Seeing the satellite abort code reported by her spectrum analyzer she ordered over the scrambled team link, "It looks like he's going along, for now - let's see how this plays out."

Quincy stepped forward again, moving Madigan aside with a light but firm hand on her shoulder. He spared barely a glance at the Knight Sabers, returning directly to outstanding business. "Your will? Signals from you... You bastard! You're a Superbuma!"

Tsking and shaking his head melodramatically, Magnus said, "I'd prefer we stop using such crude language. My name is Largo, Magnus Largo. I am the shaper of the new world! Now, hand it over to me."

Madigan had taken advantage of a few free seconds to set her smartheels to 'best support/athletic,' but that smug bastard's arrogance grated on her like no one else. "A snake is what you arre... Get him!"

The guard buma moved on cue... but rather than shedding their human forms to attack as commanded, they holstered their pistols as one, then bowed and knelt to Magnus like samurai before their lord. Laughing outright at the looks on Madigan's face and relayed by the Chairman's little doll, he goaded, "So, how about it, old man? I can already control any buma in my sight. I could build my own ground station to reach the OMS satellite if I wanted, but you can save me some time."

"The final answer is no!" Quincy stated after finding his voice again, smacking his cane against the floor emphatically. "Cyberdroids cannot possibly coexist with humans! If we released them, they would become insanely destructive and a powerful enemy of mankind."

"They are waiting," Largo countered, "the multitude of my people, whose hearts and souls you have bound. I shall lead them."

"Delusional bastard!" Quincy exclaimed. "Do you mean to become a god!"

The bumaroid held his arms out to either side in an elaborate shrug - or as if mimicking a crucifixion. His face fell into deep shadow as he replied easily, "Aah, that depends on human beings..."

"You're both wrong," Sylia interjected, "but though I deplore his methods even more than his ambitions, this 'Largo' is less so. Buma and humans CAN coexist peacefully, if they are accorded the same respect as any other intelligent being!"

Hearing such a philosophy from her supposed enemies, the angry glare Hyatt had finally settled on fixing them with melted into confusion, but Quincy merely laughed scornfully. "You, who lead the most effective buma hunters in the world, say such a thing? No one here is that naive."

"Buma hunters? No. The Knight Sabers defend the public from the excesses you and those like you perpetrate, Chairman. The fact that you choose to wield your power with supposedly rogue buma is -immaterial,-" Sylia argued, impassionedly. "We both know that any real rogue with the intelligence of a combat model, let alone civilian security or secretarial buma is bright enough to act discreetly rather than going on a rampage that can only end in their own destruction. Or was the stolen work your empire is built on still too far above you, to have grasped that truth?"

"Oh please," Largo cut in, before either Genom officer could respond. "Let's just end this foolish charade." Whipping his hand around with a supersonic crack of displaced air, he flung the little piece of transparent aluminum caught during the Sabers' dramatic entrance, drilling it into the Chairman's forehead in a spray of red followed by the blond collapsing to his knees and then the floor. "With that out of the way, I suppose it's time for me to forcefully take the OMS."

"It can't be..." Katherine gasped, one of her vibroknives dropping from suddenly nerveless fingers, to sink up to its hilt through the polished hardwood floor and the titanium-filled ceramic armor below. "The Chairman..."

Rumbling laughter filled the office like a roll of thunder, piped through well concealed speakers. Madigan looked back at the corpse, realizing with a start that while the first spurt had been red, the pool of blood spreading under it was in fact orange - it had been a remote controlled buma simulacrum all along. "Well done..." the real Quincy congratulated even as he appeared, a dozen times life size, on the Multivision. "Well done, Largo, or whatever your name was. Too bad, it was all for nothing. It'll be a long time before anyone gets the OMS... Especially you, you bastard!" Relayed gaze shifting to the armored mercenaries still tensed and ready in the far corner of the office, he added, "Knight Sabers... How about it? Since he has co-opted my security buma, remove this pest for me and I'll pay you fifty million zenii!"

Largo blasted the screen with a gravity pulse that shattered the displays into uselessness, then ripped their wiring and electronics out of the wall with his more potent magnetic powers. "There's no point in talking any longer. Hyatt!" he barked, making the befuddled sexaroid jump. "Here are your enemies, the evil people who killed your precious friends Sylvie, Anri and Nam, and one of the ones who arranged to keep you all in slavery in the first place up on Genaros." *This should be amusing,* he thought to himself, *a little something to make up for the effort I'll have to go to, ripping this place apart.*

Hearing the charge and knowing at least one part of it was true - she'd struck the final blow on Sylvie, even if both she and the DD had been out of control at the time - Linna could only shift uncomfortably, any defense frozen in her throat. It was Sylia who countered, "Sylvie... We couldn't save her, but Anri and Nam are fine! I said humans and buma could coexist, because that's what is happening. It's obvious you didn't know what he was planning; don't be pulled into this any further by that madman."

"Always so righteous, Sylia..." Magnus sneered. "It didn't take the first time, it seems, so allow me to knock some sense into you!" He struck out with another gravity wave, knocking the armored women off their feet and back against the wall, even forcing the massive Speed King battlemover a step back. Little real damage was done, but as intended it bounced their heads off the wall in such a way that the faceplates of their helmets popped open, the clear inner heads-up display visors shattering as well. Mackie instantly recovered and restarted the laser's charging sequence, but with Hyatt meant to be spared if possible he couldn't actually fire.

While the two armored vigilantes recovered, Largo leaned down to murmur confidently in his cat's paw's ear. "Now is the moment. Your foes are before you, with no idea of the abilities you now hold. Will you strike them down, or will you let honeyed words stay your hand? Kill them," he urged, grin spreading to show ever more teeth. "Kill them!" He would have liked to summon the dropped vibroknife to himself and pass it to her, but it was completely nonmetallic, presumably to make it harder to detect, and Madigan retrieved it herself after catching his glance at the fallen weapon.

That movement in turn caught Hyatt's eye, and she had no qualms about her grudge against Genom's policy-makers. She charged the purple haired executive, who brought her vibroknives up to strike but didn't expect the sexaroid's hands to flow around the blades and grab her fists. Tendrils of fusion nanites sank into the grips and then the deactivated cutting edges even as Madigan's knee strike broke them apart for a gut kick to regain breathing room.

The ceramic knives melted where they seemed thrust through Hyatt's palms, and a moment later her fingers lengthened and sharpened, forming long claws with the characteristic slightly blurred edge of a vibroblade.

At the same time, with his fire lane clear Mackie took the shot, the monstrous laser cannon's fat, deep blue beam actually intense enough to cause a few grams of recoil, just enough for the Speed King's sensors to detect. Largo on the other hand was tossed away by the backwash as his outer sheath of flesh instantly flashed into steam and then energized plasma, the cloud defocusing the beam so that as it continued to wash over him and the wall he fell against was more of a wide fan. It was still more than enough to melt the metal lacing of the once-hidden ceramel wall armor and let it flow over his slumped figure as the weapon finally ran out of power, dribbles of dull silver-brown titanium burning even as they cooled and clung to the revealed force-charged metal of his own subdermal armor or black with slag and scorched tissue where the bumaroid's false skin hadn't already been burned away, and then it was his turn to recover from an unexpected blow.

Truthfully, Magnus was most annoyed about the suit. His internal systems hadn't taken any damage and the skin would regenerate in a matter of hours, but he'd had to get the suit specially made - it wasn't easy finding clothing suitable for a person of his physical stature in Japan, let alone his social station! He growled as he started to work himself free of the chunks of shattered ceramic and clinging flows of rapidly solidifying metal.

Now focused on her opponent, Hyatt shortened one leg and extended her stride to slip over a sweep kick as she charged awkwardly in again, arms raised for a double rake that would cut her enemy to ribbons before the human woman's vastly superior skill could compensate for the enhanced buma's unexpected abilities. The other woman could see it too, and a little part of Hyatt cried inside as the realization of immanent death spread in those eyes.

And then, suddenly, she was looking into a different pair of eyes behind a pale yellow visor, framed by silken hair that was a lighter shade of lavender than her target, and her onrushing claws had been caught by another pair of hands. Hyatt strained to go through the obstacle for just a moment, then went utterly rigid with shock as the identity of the apparition sank in.

"N-nam?" she gasped. "You're alive!"

The speedster just nodded, and squeezed her gentle friend's hands a little where her own held them out of striking range, a pair of sonic beams from her shoulder pods negating the vibrations that gave them such lethality so that only tiny cuts in the webs of her fingers had formed when she caught the impact on her own palms. She smiled back as that cold glint melted away in favor of the caring look she knew from the Hyatt of old, then swept her up in a fireman's carry and dashed back out the holed window to leap into the hovering Knightwing.

For all her training she'd never been in a fight outside the dojo mats or supervised competitions, let alone a battle with her life on the line, leaving Madigan shaking with reaction from the close call. The female executive offered no resistance as Mackie swept her up in the Speed King's arms and vacated the office himself, quietly grumbling over Sylia having ordered him out of the area with the heavy laser's single shot fired but obedient to the promise he'd given to follow her orders before being allowed along in the first place.

As the gravity rings snapped out to their operating position and they soared through the predawn gloom and even after landing on the roof of the nearby (and wholly Genom-owned) Kumoshibari Security Electronics building, she clung blindly to the mecha's reassuring solidity while fear and adrenaline spasms rocked her until her teeth rattled.

Even this early in the morning, long before normal office hours would begin even in workaholic Japan, there were a LOT of people in Genom Tower, and that not even counting the ones - whole families, in some cases - who lived there permanently. Nene had long ago given up on actually appearing from her portals, after the third person thought they were being 'aggressively recruited' by some competitor and fought tooth and nail against being dragged through it, whether from actual company loyalty or simple fear of what Genom would do to them in retaliation. She'd tried opening one behind someone, reaching out and yanking them in unsuspecting, but that had been troublesome too, especially the buma.

It would have been much harder if she hadn't noticed all the armor partitions in the arcology while passing through in the misty borders of the Realm Between, partitions that not even the other Genom towers had according to Sylia's information. It let her simply move people a few thousand feet, to the protected inner areas. She was good, but not as good as her parents, who had centuries of memories from the guardian spirits they'd originally been before being transformed into their current selves to draw on for their portalling. A single gate was easy, doubles that shortcut through a few inches of the Realm Between for an arbitrary amount of real space were more difficult, and it only got harder the further separated the two Mortal Realm end points were. A thought passed through her mind of trying to open a double gate like that to a space station and having to match orbital velocity as well as the extreme range and she shuddered reflexively, before getting back to the task at hand.

Here in the fringes of the Realm Between time moved much more steadily relative to the Mortal Realm, and while she didn't know exactly how long she'd been at it, she did know that every second Sylia, Linna, and Mackie were buying for her might be paid for with their blood. She still hadn't even gotten below the top third of the tower yet, barely a tenth of its internal volume even if most of what she'd covered were offices rather than labs or cubicle farms. Those were mostly in the lower and inner areas, at least two of the energized partition walls away from the outside, and many more vertically from the top-floor suite where the confrontation was happening.

Not quite centered in the huge cone of Genom Tower, even with the original ground level was a largish park. The tower had actually been built around, under, and over it, advanced and expensive equipment built into the walls and ceiling of the massive chamber providing the most accurate simulation possible of the environment and the view of the pre-industrial Edo a few of the trees were old enough to have been planted in. It was a popular destination for school trips, one of the few areas of the tower open to the general public, and during the more important festivals and sakura-viewing season they didn't even charge admission though a strict occupancy limit was enforced.

Observing that limit was not much of a priority for the red-headed hacker at the moment, though she did feel a twinge of pity for the groundskeeper buma she'd seen collapsing against a bench to huddle and play with its watering can, overwhelmed by the unprecedented situation. Finding her next target, a slightly balding man slaving away at a dozen slightly different versions of a product logo on a large tablet-screen drawing desk, she concentrated again on the park and finding a clear space in it, then opened the portals she wanted - one right under his chair, the exit oriented so he'd come out of it on his back relative to her, the other under that on the ever-invisible 'floor' of the Realm Between so he'd only have a few inches to drop before landing on his back in the park, chair and all. It tended to knock the breath out of people, but not nearly as much as if Nene had to subdue them, and it was much faster than flitting there and back with each one herself even if they didn't resist.

She didn't dare just leave them in the Realm Between, or even one of the more stable sub-realms within it like Miribile or the place she and Linna had gotten "lost" with her parents. They'd be easy prey for the spiritual predators who roamed the misty, shadowed plane, and their souls in great jeopardy. Nor did she really want to make Genom at large aware of the mystical world so ignored in modern life - setting aside the advantage she and her friends held in keeping it from their enemies, the idea of some Genom executive learning, for example, a 'trust me' aura didn't bear thinking on, let alone proper spellcasting or summoning!

For that matter, if Nam could use magic, any buma with a brain complex enough to have a human or near-human soul to draw spiritual energy from could likely do it as well, and spellcasting was the kind of technical skill that could be programmed... In fact, programmed spells might work at archmage levels, since the major limiting factors were generally in visualization of the effect and the control to achieve it. Both usually came with practice, but if the effect could be imagined and tweaked at leisure, and refinements to the control made scientifically with the unwavering precision of chipskills, the caster's ability to channel energy became the only bottleneck - and if a being could cast in the first place, the soul was an infinitely large bottle with a very wide neck.

*Armies of mass-produced battle mages with combat spells the equal of legends like Merlin and Greymalkin, each inhumanly strong, fast, and tough as well? No, thank you, we'll make do with mouth lasers and particle beam satellites,* Nene thought as she jogged through a misty Mortal Realm wall toward the next life-force her senses detected, already marshalling her strength for the next pair of portals. *Chipping spells might be something to keep in mind, though.*

Linna and Sylia had quickly disposed of all but one of the security buma while Largo was freeing himself, and Nam and Mackie got the last two bystanders out of the immediate battle zone.

A roar and the almost musical crunch of shattering ceramic brought their attention back to Magnus Largo as his foul temper was freed at last, a visible bluish sphere of energy forming around him to force the rubble and dribbles of metal back. "ENOUGH OF THIS!" he bellowed. "You fools, who would defy a god... your deaths will be LEGENDARY!"

Perhaps a little too trusting in her strength and the durability of Sylia's armor, Linna sprang to the attack, a knucklebuster energy ball forming around her cocked fist as she came. It dissipated harmlessly as a huge iron beam tore up through the floor to catch her head on, throwing the dancer back before ripping itself completely free of the surrounding structure.

As she climbed to her feet, a gesture from Magnus seized her in an invisible grip as he had with Leon earlier that evening. With no more need for actuators to give it enhanced strength or the batteries to power them, the actual protective armor's strength had increased more than tenfold, but that did little good as it ripped itself apart under unseen control. An instant later the I-beam rammed her end-on like a freight train, folding the dazed Saber over at the waist and tossing her out through the shattered window.

Finishing with the last of the pirated buma guards, Sylia ground her teeth and sidelined her worry for her subordinates for now - they'd decided going in that this time they had to keep going for Mason until he was confirmed destroyed, even if it meant taking casualties - the threat he represented was simply too great to put themselves before the world. Her lips twisted in an unseen snarl behind the visor as her enhanced mind partitioned a small portion of itself and focussed on the memory of a garbled sound file she'd once found while designing the hardsuit communication systems, a horrid cacophony of static, squawks, and bl00ps that assaulted the strange, seemingly telepathic bond that had formed between them.

Largo winced and rubbed at his temple for a moment before looking back up at her, face twisted into even greater rage. "You could have shared in my triumph, but instead spurn my attention," he growled. "You will regret this folly... BRIEFLY!" A half dozen more beams ripped out of the walls to attack the white-armored Saber, only to be smashed aside by her own interposed plane of force, and as the ceiling collapsed at last and left them exposed to the sky the wreckage bounced off of a similar but less brilliant shielding bubble around her as well as the two of them rose through the falling debris, levitating through the manipulation of magnetic fields and gravity itself respectively.

Magnus took advantage of the distraction to grab one of the smaller steel rebars and forcibly reshape it into a helmet, a smooth cylinder with a rounded top and a slot that widened to two oval cutouts for his eyes. He even indulged in a bit of decorative vanity, a small crescent ornament at the brow and some filigree around the edges, but the important part was that forged by his will, it blocked the telepathic jamming sound.

The problem with being thrown off the summit of Genom Tower, Linna decided, was that the ground was so very far away. She actually soared out over the tops of a couple of nearby skyscrapers before the force of the tremendous impact faded enough for her ballistic arc to turn mostly downward, enough time to push away from the metal beam and catch her breath, to use her acrobatic experience to turn in the air and see that she might be headed toward the bay but would come nowhere near to reaching it, even if hitting water at these speeds would have no practical difference from hitting concrete.

Enough time to decide that no, today was, in fact, NOT a good day to die.

She wanted to live. She wanted to kiss her boyfriend again. She wanted to kick the ASS of that bastard who threw her out the window.

But really, what could she do? Her suit and its flight pack were gone, the Knightwing had fallen back with the non-combatants aboard, and the only thing she'd ever turned into was a giant monkey, not a giant bird. Sure, she was tough, but even for her the phrase "terminal velocity" had more than one meaning. The only thing she could think of was the way a beam-style ki attack generated recoil, but she'd destroyed an entire MOUNTAIN the one time she'd really gotten that one right, and she'd rather die than put any more block-wide craters in the cityscape.

But... if ki could be used to generate physical force as part of a beam attack, why not in her own battle aura? It was the same energy, after all, and just as much shaped by her will. Wanting to be free of the distraction, and to have a more inspiring last view than dirty concrete if she failed, Linna spun herself again so she could look up into the fading stars of the early morning sky and concentrated on the spiritual energy field she'd trained herself to project even in her sleep, willing it to support the flesh it wrapped around as well as defending it.

"Happy thoughts, Tink, happy thoughts!" a small corner of her mind giggled inanely.

As her plummet slowed and then unsteadily reversed itself, she had to grin. "Happy thoughts, indeed," she murmured before flaring the energy higher and blasting back toward the fight. "I can't die now, I still have so much ass to kick!"

"So, you are not completely without power," Largo mused, regarding the woman who had once been a childhood friend where the two of them floated above the apex of Genom Tower. The ever present upper-level winds buffeted and moaned as they slid around the two luminous bubbles shielding them, but his still far outshone the Knight Saber leader's. His scanners could read through it only at low resolution, little better than the unaided eye, but still well enough to discern her power source, and he scoffed at the idea of someone opposing his might with such a thin reed to lean upon.

"A fusion back pack, how quaint. Based on the Hyperbuma's resin core reactor, as well... if only they knew about it Genom's legal department would have something to say about that, I'm sure. Of course, you're about to die, so I suppose it makes little difference... You think you can match one such as me with THAT! One who commands the strongest of the basic forces, who can tap the Earth's entire magnetosphere for power and through that the energy of the SUN ITSELF? Look upon me and TREMBLE, for my final victory is at hand!"

The red-purple interference pattern effect of his personal magnetic shield grew brighter and denser as Magnus did just that, reaching out and tapping into the invisible fluxes of power that flowed from the planet's molten core and from the motion of plasma in the sun. His image began to 'pincushion' around the edges, like the view through a fisheye lens, as the energy density rose and rose, and then with a "shoom" and a flash of light it was over. Largo was left floating serenely in place, clad much as he'd been before in his dark grey suit with one white front panel, but with the addition of his helmet and a cape of royal purple that flared unnaturally calmly despite the almost gale-force high altitude winds.

Somehow, Sylia couldn't shake the feeling that it would have been better if the glowing bubble was still there.

From the Kumoshibari building nearby Mackie had been watching the confrontation through the Speed King's telescopic sensors with half an eye, most of his attention on trying to rig a cross-connect between the WTI heavy laser and the Speed King's fusion generator to charge up a second shot using the human-size manipulator arms that extended from the mecha's right forearm, Katherine Madigan still cradled absently where she clung to the left.

Her shakes were starting to subside as the terror of the moment faded further into the past, and with the distraction of a technical puzzle at hand. Madigan was by no means a technological dunce, she couldn't have done her job if she was, but she knew she was at best competent, her talents running to administration and spycraft. She was well able to judge the talents of others in that area, though, and what she was seeing was nothing short of an engineering genius at work, the kind that would revolutionize whatever field of study they turned their hands to.

She wouldn't have been surprised to learn that the unknown genius who designed the Knight Sabers' infuriatingly advanced equipment was piloting the huge battlemover that had rescued her, as he - or she - deftly made the normally unwieldy waldoes pop access panels, strip wires, and make cross connections where none had ever been meant to exist, and within a matter of minutes the tooth-ache whine of charging capacitors signaled their success. It was ugly, it was dirty, and it would undoubtedly mean countless hours of repairs to make things work the way they were meant to again, but by God it was WORKING, and frankly between the intellectual admiration and the lingering adrenaline she was incredibly turned on.

Before that thought had too much time to percolate, however, they were joined by a well-built man with incredibly blue hair (not that she could talk, her own genes had been tweaked to produce a natural lavender) who stepped from somewhere out of her sight behind them. "Come on, Maki, we have to get further back. The signs are this thing is going to get even bigger than you all thought... Hiryuko and I have already evacuated the surrounding buildings, and everyone else is back at headquarters."

"What? No way, I'm not leaving sis up there alone! This thing'll be charged again in a minute or two, I'm staying put."

Hmm, Maki? And the voice that answered was high pitched, so it probably was another woman after all, like the rest of the team. Katherine had never tried that before, but a woman with hands that could make a ground-to-orbit laser sing could surely make other things reach orbit too. "Oh god, I dinnae jus' think that," she mumbled, blushing bright red, accent slipping worse than it had in years. "An what would me mum think o' her wee Kat doin' such things?"

Of course, knowing the stories her aunt used to tell, her mother might not have been so shocked as all that. Even so, she knew it was just the adrenaline talking, no matter how much she'd love to get such a talent for herself in a professional way. Reigning herself in with the promise of a long, hot shower later, Madigan got her head back in the game, and finally jumped down from her perch on the battlemover's arm, landing with the catlike grace of the accomplished martial artist she was on the crushed stones of the building's roof.

"So, a family business is it, then?" she commented, cocking her head to look up at the towering mecha's sensor turret 'head' before nodding at the jury-rigged laser cannon still charging in the beast's right hand. "Though judgin' by that, I'd guess you're the mysterious brains behind the operation. I don't suppose there's any chance I could lure you away to a position with me, is there?"

Down girl, Madigan told herself sternly as the possible double meaning raced through the back of her mind.

Down boy, Mackie told himself as the possible double meaning of the question raced through the back of his mind. "No, there's just too much between us," he said half-jokingly. "It's this whole big thing where you're at the top of the evil corporation I'm dedicated to destroying, it wouldn't work out."

Offended, she set her hands on her hips and glared up at the optics. "Genom, evil? There's a share o' dirrty work that must be done to run any organization once it grows beyond a few trusted friends, but maybe you didn't notice how Genom's buma practically rebuilt this city after the Great Kanto Quake, or how Japan's economy is actually in the positive for the first time in a decade? How about the fact that three quarters of the charity programs for those orphaned or permanently disabled in that self same quake are paid out o' Genom's pocket? That's not even goin' into the number o' jobs we make worldwide, jobs without dangerous, repetitive toil because heavy labor has been taken over by Genom's buma. That's not even goin' into the human lives saved by usin' buma soldiers to fight the Polar War!"

Inside the cockpit, Mackie scowled back. "Anytime you mention the disgusting mockery Genom made of the buma designs it stole from Dr. Stingray, you shoot your argument in the foot," he told her heatedly, "and if you think giving a kid over here a place to live makes up for killing a kid over there because his house is in the way and he doesn't want to leave, that's even worse than just not realizing the suffering you cause. If the Polar War wasn't such a huge profit maker Genom had the production capacity to fill those government orders that constantly under-run and end it two years ago! Leeches, that's what you are... if it weren't for the fact of all those jobs you mentioned, filled by people who don't know about the darker side of it, we wouldn't even be having this conversation."

"Oh, and what's that supposed t' mean?" Madigan demanded. "Lilly white knights have a spot of tarnish after all, you'd just kill me and be done? Well if that's your poison, go right ahead, an' then you'll be the only hypocrite on th' roof!"

The laser had finished charging, and the Speed King crouched down to use both arms' manipulators since both were free now. It also gave the impression of crouching down to loom over the spitfire executive as Mackie quietly asked, "The Knight Sabers hardsuits from last year cost millions of zenii between them, and they're still at least five years beyond what the rest of the world calls state of the art. This year's suits are probably another two or three years further ahead, and the third generation gear like my Speed King here are too much to guess, the kind of thing that might never be duplicated without another crazy breakthrough, a century at least. Instead of all of that... how hard do you think it would have been to build a bomb, and hide it in a buma like any one of the crews that operate out of the Tower every day for services contracted to the city? Can you check every seweroid, every metermatic, every junkion? The fusion plant's tertiary self destruct authorization code is fg8g-hk1g-hkdf-7iku... Genom Tower would be a hole in the ground, if we operated the same way you do."

Floored, Katherine paled as her apparently reluctant rescuer rattled off one third of the code that would set the fusion plant deep in the underground levels of the Tower into a feedback loop that could only end in an explosion easily big enough to lay waste to the massive arcology and likely everything around for miles, a code that no living person or electronic system was ever supposed to know more than two parts to, even Quincy himself, by his own orders... the part that she was missing from her own two!

The implications were more terrifying than the fact that this outsider had just blurted it out like a comment about the weather - as a direct threat it was all but moot, she could already tell they weren't going to kill her and she'd be raising holy hell to change the system around as soon as she reached a telephone, let alone arrived back at the building. It was the fact that anyone could have the information in the first place, to have considered and discarded the idea as causing too much collateral damage was the thing that chilled her blood. Where one sneak could go others could follow, and some had no care for collateral damage.

Katherine liked to think she kept it to a minimum herself, but... The capitol bomb in Tanzaar had been planted by intermediaries - 'sponsored allies' in the corporate jargon, in their own terms 'freedom fighters' - and yes, the regime they'd toppled with the assassination had been corrupt and oppressive, but it's not as if the one they were trying to install was anything but a different set of bastards who wanted to take a turn at the top instead of the bottom, and with the way they'd overdone the thing it had flattened a good chunk of the surroundings, with the typically third-world poor civilian businesses and housing back to back with government buildings as well.

While Madigan's mind raced Mackie had finished getting the cannon into fireable condition again, and just in time from the looks of things - he had no idea how Linna was flying without her armor, but by the looks of the energy charging between her hands she was about to pull off one seriously spectacular attack, and as it happened he was in just the right place to hit the still worryingly unscathed Largo from both sides at once, and maybe overwhelm whatever defense he was using.

* * *

><p>I noticed on the reread that a lot more Japanese words and suffixes have crept into this part. I tried stripping them out again, but couldn't come up with concise ways to give things the same feeling in pure English... Then I decided to just let it go, since 'English' is such a polyglot already. My writing style has changed in the past couple years, it seems, let alone the decade since the first half dozen chapters were laid down. Anyway, on to the next topic.<p>

I never liked OVA 6 much - the hyperbuma have interesting designs but total cardboard minion cutout characterization; granted that's appropriate for the role they were created to fill both within continuity and in the show, but Largo is little better and he's the main villain. On top of that, Leon's stakeout crew are suddenly the only police in the city, Leon and Daley turn stupid for no reason, and the battle sequences are typical melodramatic fighting show tripe. Ironic, then, that the last item is the only one I ended up making significant changes to, when my major crossover elements are the grand champion of all mindless fighting shows and a parody of those same shows... But at least Nene's gung-ho attitude isn't out of character now that she's become an effective combatant.

The term "cycroder" is from the Lensman anime, but NOT the original books, and is essentially a transatmospheric hover cycle. As to why the two works that share a few names but nothing else are so unrelated, apparently the current holders of e.e. 'doc' smith's estate utterly detest his writing, and while they are willing to license it occasionally in the name of ca$h they aren't that enthusiastic. Of course, my info on this is dated circa 1985 (like the anime, IIRC), so maybe (Hopefully!) someone who digs it has or will become the trustee. That said, an orbit-capable motorcycle is absurd in just the right way for me to like it despite its origins, and fits in with the DBZ space pod tech level as long as you're willing to trust a force field to keep your atmosphere in and radiation/micrometors/etc. out instead of the pods' super-alloy shell.

Yes, Juli Anderson is another daughter of Amy, and sister to Gibson's fiancee Naomi. Through the bit about her eventual marriage, she is also a Xenosaga reference. Her name is pronounced "yoo-lee" if you are unfamiliar with it, and she can be seen ever so briefly in OVA 6, complete with bear. Actually, I picked the back story I used because she looks pretty much just like Xenosaga's Juli except for having Mizuno Ami/Amy Anderson's deep blue hair. Having already connected Amy to Australia I couldn't resist. Joachim is a German name, which ties in as well with Mackie having gone to study in Germany between Crisis and Crash in canon, even though that won't be happening here. Joachim's interest in Mercury lay in trying to understand how some high-class buma develop such advanced traits as intuition and natural emotion when others can't even extrapolate from existing instructions to cover a related but different situation, one of a great many psychologists and neurologists working on next-generation buma brains.

The Kumoshibari building is where Priss and her Typhoon jump from when she makes her attempt to rescue Anri in the original canon, though no name is given for it as such. The word is an aggregate meaning "spider web."

Nene and the Sorcery Corps - while she is letting her fears run away with her a bit in regards to the ability of buma spellcasters and the mass-producability of them, the reality is that chipping the spells isn't as effective as all that - it's more like a second-hand memory that takes care of the visualization aspects, but control must still be learned. It's still a handy possibility, especially for Nam, who has a better rapport with chipskills than humans due to being designed to access them.

As seen earlier, Linna's previous (apparent) death while fighting the Griffon is in fact already becoming legendary - "Don't go like Green" is already on its way to being the ADP version of "Break a leg!"

I trust it's obvious NOW what character I've been drawing inspiration from for Magnus Largo's enhanced abilities, no? If you still don't get it, look up "Eric Magnus Lehnsherr" and get ready to slap yourself. Spellings have been changed around a few times, but you should get the right hit off of that. The subspace bubble and virtual molecule avatar are something different, though - pulled almost directly from the action/humor anime "Moldiver" which is yet another that I recommend without reservation for a T+ audience (see more below). His speech patterns kind of go over the top into cheeseland here, it's true, but it's actually intentional - never that stable in his first life, the downloaded memories that the buma currently known as Largo woke up with have that weird feeling like they don't really belong to him that's common in chipskills and is the closest thing in this setting to the cyberpunk genre's game-balance-rule tradition of cyberpsychosis...

Mason DIED. His soul refused to move on, but (and in no small part because of the current lack of a planetary kami) did not become a ghost. Instead it possessed his old body when the ZODIAC nanites and Gero revived it. Mason never really felt like he fit in with humans (so of course he must be better!) Largo remembers being human and KNOWS he isn't one any more - so that means he's shed his mortal weaknesses, right? And a mortal who transcends mortality is... a god, right? So, he can do whatever he likes because if he wants to and he's a god, that's Divine Will, and anyone who gets in the way of Divine Will is obviously due for a smiting. And, hey what do you know, he has a handy dandy peripheral in the sky, standing by to smite on command! See, that's proof he's a god! And he's a buma, so that means... he's the God of Buma! Well, can't let His Chosen People be used as slaves by mere humans, now can he? The existence of the Overmind System is obviously a part of his divine plan, seizing it for his own means all of His Chosen People can know and act on Divine Will immediately. What could possibly be more holy, more right?

Yes, that's quite a divergence from Magneto, closer to Onslaught if anything, but then Magnus isn't supposed to BE Magneto, only metareferencially inspired by him. No superhero comics in this world, instead they got the real (animated) Batman and space opera/supernatural comics were the In thing, stuff like Lensman, Trek, The Shadow, and BtVS. There's even a two-part episode about one of the old in-continuity shows in Batman the Animated Series, one of Kid Bruce's inspirations for becoming a costumed vigilante, called The Grey Ghost. It's one of those stories that made the show so jaw droppingly awesome in the early seasons, and I could easily go on about it at length, but have already done so too much for a single note.

On Moldiver, I'm going to quote the inventor, Hiroshi's, opening monologue as presented in the official Pioneer subtitles (which are actually pretty good, for prosubs, except where idiomatic expressions are used, in which case something the subbers felt had the same impact is used instead of the literal translation) and expand on it afterward: "The shield of the dimension wrapped in spaces forming into the dimensions of an individual isolating it from the outside to make the outer cover. The effects of radiation, gravity, and temperature are absorbed. Every wave motion of energy can be restricted. Even a bullet, or resistance to the shock of a nuclear explosion. The inertia mass depends on surface control resistance. Movement at the velocity of light is possible. Furthermore, the muscle power doubles depending on its function. That power is infinite!" First sentence: It's a separate dimension inside the shell than outside, the surface is just the interface between the two. Second through fourth: Nothing affects a moldiver except what the moldiver wants to have affect it (well, except another moldiver, or in my version things that include the magic/dimensional side of Dykstra physics) Also in fourth through the end: Any way a Moldiver wants to move, the moldiver can move, and since the shape is controlled by the interface between the two universes the strength is literally infinite - you can't overcome it because where the surface of a moldiver is, is where the universe ends. Just his bad luck that ki attacks are included in the "things that can affect a moldiver" list.

In another scene, the mol unit is hooked to the desktop PC that programs it and it's noted that "the outer shape is controlled by brain waves" In likewise fashion, the apparent shape of the interface is controlled by the mol unit, not what the user looks like. This becomes apparent pretty much immediately in the show and gets played on a lot in the later episodes. Of course, it IS a humor show, so it's not quite that simple - inexperienced pilots can easily be kicked around, or those unfamiliar with the HUD interface used. Largo doesn't have these problems as the system he uses is built into and directly controlled by himself, but he doesn't get quite the same energy efficiency, having to tap into planetary and solar power to get it going. On the other hand, the original version could only operate for around ten minutes according to the HUD timer, though that usually gets cheated around in terms of camera time. There are significant differences from a Moltron such as was built into that setting's Yamato, but I'll only go into that when it actually becomes directly relevant, in Season two or three.

As for my rating Moldiver, a humor show, as suitable for teens and up, there's brief non-explicit nudity (not normally something I'd bump it for on its own, but worthy of mention) and in Ep5 one REALLY bloody bit. Like, '33S equivalent gets TORN IN HALF and crawls forward with her arms to finish the mission with her organs hanging out' bloody... but it's an important moment for understanding the characters, something that's always a bit of a challenge with only six episodes and a medium large cast.

If you don't want spoiling, skip to the next note, because I'm about to share the insight that eluded me and made me really dislike the way they ended the show for the first dozen or more viewings, so others can enjoy it all the way along - simply, why would Moldiver III be so adamant about defeating and causing Mirai pain when he knows she's his big sister, and despite their arguments the sibling trio generally stick together? Even though it only shows him going back and forth a couple of times, he seems to have actually befriended the Power Dolls, not just become the nodding acquaintances that are shown - and Mirai, wrapped up in her idea of a heroine for love and justice who triumphs over evil has just killed them all. Brutally. Even Professor Amagi, who built the emergency-recovery teleport and brainchip systems they use, thinks that one just sacrificed her life for a mission about nothing more than salving his pride, and even though they have the "they look like girls, but they're really just robots, not people" stigma going in full force Moldiver III (I CANNOT remember the kid's name! Argh!) wants her to understand that she isn't playing a game, she's really causing pain even though nothing can touch her. That and the childish urge to prove he's the king of the tech hill, but you don't beat up your sister over something like that, especially if she's just using it, not the one who designed it. Likewise, for stopping the Sakigake he can't come out and SAY he's trying to prevent the 90% chance of something going wrong with the experimental system and making Amagi look bad, so he has to go on about not being willing to let such a flawed device exist.

Okay, spoilage over, on to the next topic. Crushed stones on the roof of buildings - this is done to promote good drainage while keeping reasonably stable footing - the layer is typically a few inches deep with a polyurethane weather tight liner under that. It's quite a common design feature, apparently.

As for Katherine Madigan's justifications for and pride in her work - well, this isn't reality, there actually are people who are evil for the sake of being evil and like nothing better than a spot of torturing kittens over their corn flakes of a morning. Well, not literally right over the bowl, because that's drippy and gross, but you get the point. However, neither Kat nor Quincy are in fact among them - as far as they're concerned, what they do is good for the world in general even it's occasionally bad for individuals, and the fact that it's very good for them personally is just a very pleasant bonus. If not them, who, after all? They don't claim sainthood, far less Mason's delusions, but all in all, they can look in the mirror and say "I have my faults, but I am a good person," and not feel like they're lying. And like I said, when you get right down to it, it's true - they're antagonists certainly, but not villains per se, even if Madigan can pull the trigger on Callahan herself with no more show of emotion than when she read the death toll reports for the Tanzaarian bombing. It's something necessary, so she does it, with a minimum of fuss and the only mercy she can afford, which is to make it quick. I suppose that makes her what's called a 'stone cold killer,' but at least she doesn't get off on it, and this night has all the makings of a life-altering experience for her, being on the sharp end for the first time. If you really can't see it, go back a few paragraphs to "Mason DIED..." and consider her in comparison to Magnus.

As for her getting all hot and bothered over "Maki's" skilled hands, (a feminine Japanese name) don't read too much into it, it really is just the biochemical reaction she told herself it was, a perfectly natural human reaction to a close brush with death. Just ask Jeena Malso from (original) ADPolice Files, Faith from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or even Leia Organa of, well, not Star Wars itself, but anytime post Jabba's Palace in Return of the Jedi. On the other hand, she IS a hottie; anything is possible in the future. If the evil corporation thing could be worked out, well, isn't a good looking older woman essentially the ne plus ultra teenage male fantasy? Given that brains seem to get her going and Mackie hasn't even begun to experience the effects of his own ZODIAC enhancement, it's not like the attraction wouldn't be mutual. So to put it a bit bluntly... I wouldn't kick her out of the bed, no.

More notes as well as more story in Ch 06c!


	14. Chapter 6c

10_BD_WOASS_Ch_06c

2010-10-30 - saved the Imperial Palace on camera, since it's so close by  
>2009-11-30 - restored cliffhanger to this chapter now that 6ex is almost finished, polished MinaTobi scene  
>2009-11-25 - credits fix<br>2009-11-22 - I like pie. I don't like grammar goblins and spelchek spooks. Having eliminated many of the latter two, I now go to enjoy the former and make more notes for 6EX.  
>2008-10-08 - moved last scene to 6EX to kill the gratuitous cliffhanger<br>2008-10-02 - draft complete, and this third part is right around 50kb... so I could rearrange things in two 100Kb files, but I like the way they're split up now so I won't.  
>2008-09-30 - split off the third file, to keep the size of each part in the 75Kb region. That may end up making this third one a bit short, but not if it keeps growing like it has been today.<p>

Continued from 10_BD_WOASS_Ch_

Sylia had traded a few ineffective blows with Largo, even tried the matter-degenerating attack she'd used against the possessed Griffon, but all it had done was cause a momentary discoloration on his chest where it struck, which quickly shrank back to nothing. The irritating man had just laughed and praised her attempt, like a child showing off a blob of crayon scribbles claiming it to be a pony.

"What a cute attack," he'd smarmed. "Why, if I was a mortal, that would be quite something. How sad for you that I AM A GOD! Master of a universe all my own, and soon to be master of this one! The shell before you is simply an avatar, a virtual molecule at the border of the two, refreshed from moment to moment... reaction times, speed, coefficient of friction, all variable at will! Strength and form, meaningless! I control the horizontal, I CONTROL THE VERTICAL! Nothing you do can cause more than the most momentary inconvenience, fool!"

Seeing Sylia back off, Linna charged in with a flying body-check enhanced with one of her Buster Fist ki blasts and knocked the unprepared Magnus tumbling, following up by grabbing his ankle and building speed with a spin to hurl him down at the concrete rubble and its forest of projecting rebars from where the ceiling of Quincy's office had collapsed. This plan was foiled when Magnus suddenly stopped whirling around at the end of her arm, wrenching Linna's shoulder as if she'd just run into a wall. She let out a yelp and rebounded, wishing she still had her helmet so she could know what Sylia's plan was. As things stood, all she could do was try to buy more time until the White Saber decided to act, and she allowed herself to drop, as she charged for a multi-spectrum beam attack, raising the line of fire so if it missed or or blew through Magnus it would head up into the sky instead of hitting anything on the ground. There would still be the chance of hitting a plane or something, but vanishingly small. She just hoped she could get the complex technique right again, only one success versus dozens of attempts wasn't a very encouraging record...

Sylia had reached maximum reactor output with her last energy attack, but even using all of it to boost physical movement hadn't made so much as a wrinkle on Magnus's suit. Now, seeing the way his ridiculously high power allowed him to not just bend but actively ignore the normal laws of physics as he recovered from Linna's attack, she began to wonder if there was anything they could do to stop him, without some equally ridiculous ability. The trouble was, while she could theoretically drain and convert the energy of any source she could visualize the relative position of, there simply wasn't any way to match the output of an entire planet's magnetic field, let alone the sun itself. He recovered from the undignified position the abortive spin had left him in and drifted higher, laughing - actually laughing! - at their utter inability to hurt him... but Sylia could see something he could not, and that was the slowly regenerating tear through the purple cape where Linna's Buster Fist had gone off. Even so, the thought of being mocked by a maniac like him made her want to drain all the heat out of the jerk and freeze him solid, then see how he laughed it off.

Well, why not? Either it would work, it would give her a power surge while draining his, or it would buy time for whatever Linna was preparing while he laughed some more. Then the sink field snapped into being, and Largo's laughter cut off as if a switch had been thrown as he immediately noticed the drain. "So, you want to measure your capacity against mine, little mortal?" he asked. "Very well, throw open the floodgates, and let us see how long it takes for you to be burned by the power of a god!" He gave her a mad, feral smile and concentrated on drawing more and more pure power into his avatar shell.

Linna was feeling more confident that she'd at least get to try the Gosaiya ("Five Colors Bow") Hiryuko had tried to teach her, she'd pulled off the hardest part of the technique successfully while Largo bantered, sketching first a large central circle with both hands, using yin and yang ki, and then five smaller ones overlapping it but not each other, each attuned to a different one of the traditional sorcerous elements, now all she had to do was charge them equally.

The move was halfway between the ki techniques of martial arts and real spellcasting, but the energies used were in fact the same, the ageless redhead had explained, it was just a difference in mindset that separated the traditions, so much so that most trained in one couldn't begin to wrap their minds around the other. The Kagami style, like the Saotome style that was its root, was based around adapting ALL other techniques, however, not just techniques easy to use or understand, and the challenge of merging the two had been too great to pass up. Considering the power of the resulting technique, Linna could only be glad she had, given the situation. She poured everything she could into the charging attack, having seen the damaged cape as well and trusting in her team mates to finish the job if she could just open a hole in his defenses.

The separate elemental circles began to glow brilliantly purple, red, orange, yellow, or green, a faint swirl of each trailing away into the swirling yin and yang that linked them all, where a pulsating star of brilliant white trailing little licks of each and a thousand more variations grew. Eventually she could feel the attack begin to destabilize as the elements began to lose the necessary balance and let the charging stage end, the separate circles rapidly draining away. She cupped the brilliantly shining mote between her hands, squinting against its brilliance as she aimed and got ready to fire, then called out the attack and let it rip. The star in her palms stretched into a shaft of brilliant white, the five elemental colors spiraling around its length. The recoil was tremendous, like a high pressure fire hose, and with all the energy poured into the attack she was hard pressed to keep herself stable in the air.

Sylia had cut off her siphon effects and pretended to be overloading when she saw Linna's charging attack change, letting brilliant blue-white energy crackle over her armored suit in a harmless display and shuddering as if in pain, while preparing her own attack for as soon as her team mate fired, a stream of phase-synchronized rapid nadions.

Linna's attack landed first, a maelstrom of light and flashes of color that tore a scream of shock and pain from Largo as it actually hurt him. Sylia's golden orange beam and somehow a second fat blue laser burst from Mackie struck almost immediately afterward, a three way vice of power that sent out splashes and spatters of energy to scatter destruction across the landscape, and which left him battered and burned when it finally faded.

Battered, burned, and unfortunately still quite capable, and now through playing with them since the mice had shown themselves able to bite back. He swooped on the wavering Linna in a streak of purple, attacking in a hail of blows that knocked her around like a paddleball for a few seconds before finishing with an overhand smash that sent her hurtling disoriented and at best half-conscious for the street far below before either woman could react.

The situation now desperate, Sylia opened herself to the more alien perceptions she usually ignored since her enhancements had fully activated, the visible world suddenly becoming just a small window of extra detail in a full-sphere rendered in electromagnetic spectra that had no words in human language to describe their color, and the even stranger penetrative sense that reported density and surfaces over a radius of a few hundred feet. Largo was like a beacon of power in the non-visible wavelengths, and his outer surface was absolute as if the universe just ended where he stood...

But then, hadn't he said as much? That his real body existed within protected space, and what they saw was only an interface - the way the damaged sections of his avatar construct let the mechanical body within show through but only in a vague way, as if it wasn't quite real, just an image of itself... she snapped her siphons back in place and resumed a physical attack, concentrating on striking the slowly closing gaps in the protective virtual molecule. She tried to come up with a solution to do meaningful damage to something that wasn't really even part of the same universe, now that Linna and her mystical abilities that still defied proper analysis was again out of the fight and Nene still hadn't returned from her separate assignment. Was there some way she could duplicate his trick, then perhaps synchronize their pocket universes and attack directly?

There was nothing left but to try, at this rate Largo would win in moments and all of humanity would lose. She intensified the power drain on his construct, drawing all she could to power the reality-warping fields she emanated, needing to create new conduit fields as well to handle the incredible amounts of power, and threw it against the fabric of reality itself.

Largo sneered at her as he rose again to hover at her height. "This dance was getting old the first time, even if you did manage a sneaky trick. Do you think you can possibly draw enough power to make a difference?" He struck then, hammering blows to emphasize each word as he bellowed, "I! AM! A! GOD!"

It wasn't working! Nothing she tried would bend space-time enough to pinch off into the kind of pocket the madman's real body was protected in, and simply attacking the construct was useless. Desperate, she turned to the theories she'd developed from studying the Kagami family's portal technique, hoping perhaps that if she couldn't create a synchronized pocket to Largo's she could simply tear a hole to it. The formulae said it would work, but she'd never had enough energy... laying in still more conduit pathways, Sylia rearranged her energy construct so it flowed around her with only the smallest tithe taken into her internal fields for control and reinforcement, fearing that any more power flux would damage even her enhanced body.

"I'm certainly going to try," she snarled back, and threw wide the gates on her visualization of the siphon field. Unimaginable power coursed around her, and the soft blue radiance of her defensive barrier turned into an eye-twisting silhouette, a Sylia-shaped window on the nothingness between realities. To Sylia it was worse, as the tortured cityscape far below, the stars high above, and all that lay between abruptly vanished leaving her suspended in the eternal abyss, an infinity of nothingness that seemed an invitation to madness.

And yet, it was not empty, for emptiness implies a space to be filled, and while there was nothing, there was also... something. She had the distinct feeling that her human mind was not truly equipped to understand the phenomena she perceived, and could only flounder for imprecise analogies, but... There was also a tree, a huge massive tangle that branched and merged and rambled like a Banyan from the most terrible nightmares of mad lumberjacks. She had a connection to it still, and could only hope she'd be able to return as she'd come, or this would be nothing more than an elaborate method of suicide. Of Largo's pocket, she could see no sign, nor anything else that looked helpful.

There was no sensation of gravity or direction, and yet, one way was definitely "down," and there was a sensation of... something, something powerful there. Like a spider lowering itself on a single gossamer strand, she descended, the corner of her mind where thoughts of the mystical were exiled offering a silent prayer that no careless hand or sudden breeze would snap her thread.

The nothingness was filled, momentarily, by black and cream and blue, and the scent of ice cream and crackling electricity, but before she could form any coherent impression the sensations were gone, and that little corner of her mind stopped gibbering in terror.

Her heart had not beat and her lungs were still since coming to this void but it still was a very long time before she noticed the tree thinning out, its myriad branchings flowing together to a central trunk from which power seemed to radiate tangibly, so much that only a little way beyond the first division she couldn't bear to "look" at it. Even where she'd stopped it glowed golden like sunlight through honey, and she reached out a tentative hand to touch it in wonder. It was warm, like the kitten Mother had gotten her when she was five, purring under her palm. It was hot like a sweet potato fresh from the fire... scorching like a blade from the forge - it was burning her alive!

Suddenly, the predawn sky of Japan was all around her once more, but she had no time to appreciate it, or the beat of her heart, or the air as she drew breath and screamed as energy flared out from her body. A shockwave of pure power blasted out in all directions as the literal light of creation flared over Megatokyo. The cracked and battered remains of her body armor suit were vaporized instantly, the ruptured fusion backpack less than an ant's sneeze in a hurricane to the energy streaming off of her. Then, impossibly, it was a blade of fire in her hand, instead of thrust through her heart, and Sylia had control. The energy flow stabilized, her skin-tight energy glove glowing too brightly blue to see through - just as well, with the destruction of her armor and bodysuit - the only visible features her eyes and a geometric shape on her forehead, a narrow ellipse with a central divider and diagonal lines in from each side that joined it to the edges.

More importantly, she knew now, somehow, that attacking Largo's construct form was NOT useless - that if it was penetrated, the border of the pocket reality would allow a strong enough attack to affect the man himself. Even an atomic bomb wouldn't be enough, but she had more potent weapons than mere concussion and heat, however intense, and with new resolve Sylia marshaled her energies once more, reforming defenses and conduits scattered by that first rush of power.

Those eyes turned like the beacons of doom to regard Largo, hovering not far away where he'd weathered the shockwave, and as planes of lambent force formed around her Sylia gave challenge over the telepathic link their nanite engineered enhancements created, the simulated helmet not able to block it as the real thing had. *If you claim to be a god, then let us fight as gods, Brian J. Mason.*

Largo's eyes narrowed in fury at the mention of his abandoned name, the name that had belonged to a mere human. *Oh, it's on, bitch.*

He reached out with a clawed hand and more esoteric means to grab the haemoglobin in her blood and rip it out through her skin, only to find the attack slashed through and stopped short by a plane of force. A moment later that was gone but he had no time to try again as a tractor beam seized each hand and foot, while a force helix clawed at his torso like some huge, softly glowing drill. It clawed and tore at his virtual molecule until a whole section fell away. Then another nadion beam struck down the center of the helix, only the fact that he'd kept the energized armor of his real body active stopping it from blowing him in half.

Changing his personal laws of physics to ignore gravity he slipped away like a watermelon seed between two fingers and dropped to the surface of the Genom Tower again, reaching out to its metal bones and ripping them loose by the hundreds to throw like oversized machinegun fire at Sylia. She dodged a few and simply batted others aside, but that wasn't the real point of the attack - it was mainly a distraction while he bracketed her for a satellite targeting solution. No less than three of the blue-white beams struck down at her from the sky, one not quite directly overhead, one a bit to the east, and one at a sharp angle from the west, only barely in range. The force of the massed protons drove her down out of the target locus, though not before doing its share of damage even through her full-powered shields. The three beams interfered with each other to produce something akin to a small but almost radiation-free nuclear explosion where they met undiminished.

Sylia and Largo were blasted deep into the armored cone of Genom Tower, while the buildings around its base were simply flattened by the shockwave. If there was a window left intact in the city after the shockwave from Sylia's extradimensional excursion there certainly wasn't now - even as far out as the Saber headquarters the greenhouses that were its legitimate facade were reduced to bare skeletons with no more than a few broken remnants of glass clinging to their frames, like the last stubborn leaves of an oak in the heart of winter. Ancient wards granted by Amaterasu herself to her mortal descendants barely deflected the worst of the blast from the Imperial Palace not four miles away, and the Diet building shuddered and creaked alarmingly. If not for the Kagami trio's efforts at evacuating the area the loss of life would have been literally uncountable given how little remained of the central blast zone, but the energized armor partitions within the Tower had held, and in the inner levels the ground-shaking shock wave had passed through without so much as making the power flicker, though people were knocked off their feet and all manner of items fell over.

The smoke from the explosion had barely begun to disperse when first Magnus and then Sylia herself erupted from the rubble, twin fountains of debris marking where they'd lain. Eying the devastation with a sinking heart Sylia knew she had to draw the battle away from the city, or at least higher into the atmosphere so any more blasts would be dissipated by distance. She sent another attack his way, an invisible tiger's fist of cutting planes that slashed at the tattered-looking construct, then another short nadion pulse before fleeing upwards as he tried to charge in and retaliate. The satellites stabbed at her again as she rose, a fourth joining in from further south as she cleared the horizon on its orbit, and she winced at the thought of what the missed shots must be doing below but didn't have time to worry about it just then.

The Saber leader put on a final burst of speed then formed another set of constructs, more cutting planes in a criss-crossing array that her pursuer would ram into as he followed, and this time as he drove into them rather than being driven away they struck true and drew blood. Orange synthetic blood, but palpable hits nonetheless; Magnus howled in anger at the affront.

After that it was mostly a blur, even to her usually perfect memory - a mess of punches and kicks, awkward at first since neither was used to needing or being able to brace themselves in midair with the forces they were using, interspersed with energy and force attacks as Sylia could find space and time, or as Largo remembered his gravity pulse blasters at last, since having been carried away on the tide of power before had swept them from his mind. They also rose higher and higher into the still-dark sky, until Sylia suddenly realized with a shock that the thing she'd just thrown him into was one of the laser satellites, one that had been charging for another shot at her to judge by the size of the explosion. Their insults and yelps of surprise and pain had long ago fallen entirely into the telepathic channel, so the silent explosion, only accompanied by the briefest of telepathic cries before the link finally fell silent, was what actually drove it home. She automatically moved in to confirm the kill, long training taking over while her mind reeled at the fact that she'd somehow reached orbit under her own power.

One last bright orange nadion stream was enough to disintegrate the floating corpse once known as Magnus Largo, before that as Brian Mason Junior, and end his menace for good... leaving her with nothing to occupy her mind except the fact that she was FLOATING IN SPACE, without so much as a pair of lacy panties to protect her from the most hostile environment imaginable... that strange power she'd contacted in the place that wasn't a place slipped away as she started to panic, lungs that had been emptied by battle cries minutes before aching and pumping futilely against vacuum. Even her normal skin-tight defensive field flickered as her concentration failed. Her ears popped painfully as the last of the pressure change finally took effect, and her eyes stung as the liquid on their surface boiled away. Just as the first droplets of blood seeped across her tongue and she really felt herself losing control, a pair of strong, ceramel-plated hands grasped her shoulders and spun her around.

In the grove she tended with her sisters, a young looking girl watched as the little spider climbed back up her thread, and killed the parasite that had threatened to infect her whole branch. The girl laid aside her (brand new, ultra-improved) Super Banpei Clip-o-tron Mk.V with a relieved smile, sighing, "Looks like I don't have to prune that one after all. I'm glad." She'd have to keep an eye on the spider too, of course, but she had a good feeling about that one. Considering who the girl was, that was significant indeed.

The space development type buma had been one of the original Stingray designs, put into production almost unchanged after being acquired by Genom, a chunky, three-fingered humanoid with an elongated cranial casing to house long-range sensors and the extended life support systems for its cloned biological brain and muscles. They had been assigned to the SOL III series laser platforms for maintenance purposes, since having a multi-billion zenii weapon system knocked offline and lost because of a five cent bolt that drifted away from one of the many other items in orbit would have been rather annoying. They were also equipped with a standard emergency kit, and though the designers had assumed that any unsuited human it encountered still alive would actually be within a station, the oxygen mask was just as welcome to her here and now, even if the adhesive bandages it tried to apply to her multitude of cut, split, or abraded patches of skin just slid off her restored personal shield. Even so, she couldn't imagine how she was going to get back down to the planet... she couldn't really make a successful atmospheric reentry in her birthday suit, could she?

Before she was forced to make up her mind, a second armored figure approached, one a bit more familiar for all it was a lighter blue than the last time she'd seen it.

Priss waved to the woman who'd brought her back from the edge in the wake of her Outrider boyfriend's death a few years ago and given her a purpose, even if she felt like she'd grown beyond that role now. She'd been heading back to her trailer to pack stuff up so the guys could move in for their tour when the big blast had gone off. She'd instinctively thrown herself into disaster relief, shifting collapsed buildings to free people Niichigo's sensors had detected trapped, delivering the injured to medics since what she knew about first aid was pretty much exhausted at "immobilize the spine and any broken bones, apply pressure to bleeding." While the musician focused on rescue operations her Guardian-daughter-partner (and seriously, she HAD to come up with a quick way to say that) kept track of the battle overhead even as it stretched into orbit.

Even though she'd denied being a Knight Saber any time someone had asked, had repeated countless times the words to Leon, that she'd quit because she couldn't be a part of what they were doing any more, she didn't want to see her former companions get hurt... when Sylia had started floundering after winning the fight, she'd laid out one last victim in the triage area some of the medics had set up to handle her repeated trips, a teenaged blonde who'd been slashed all down one arm by falling glass, said she had a longer run to make so it might take a few minutes, then shifted the heavy duty gravity drive units of cycroder form out of storage and took off straight up.

Once she would have assumed that the freaky-looking buma pawing at the older woman (and why the hell was Sylia up here NAKED, anyway? Not that Priss couldn't appreciate the view, but damn!) was an enemy and blown it away out of hand, but now... Hand signals proved woefully inadequate to get her point across, but after an amused lift of the eyebrow Sylia's voice came through on a radio frequency, despite the obvious lack of anything approaching a helmet or even a simple headset.

"So, it seems you've made you peace with our intruder, and it has capabilities as surprising as my own have proven to be," the Saber leader quipped, amused.

"Yeah," she replied, not really sure what to say. She'd been planning on avoiding all of them, for at least as long as the Replicants' tour lasted, and now here she was face to face with the only person she wanted to face even less than Nene and her puppy dog eyes.

*Just deal with the issue at hand,* Niichigo suggested, reasonably. *There's still a lot more to do on the ground, once you get back. There's no need to stick around just because you give her a ride.*

*Good point,* the singer replied, before offering, "You're looking a little underdressed to be hitchhiking in this weather, how about I get you back to Megatokyo... or what's left of it," she mumbled the last, joke falling flat in the wake of what had taken place. It was easily as bad as the aftermath of the DD fight and Linna's giant rampage, but spread through the entire Tokyo Bay region instead of a dozen or two blocks. "So, this other guy," she continued after a few seconds, flicking a nod at the buma, "is he with you, or just happening by?"

Not expecting what had appeared to be a normal human despite odd energy readings to have been capable of radio communication, the space buma hadn't identified itself before. "I am designated SOL-3-5-SYMAN," it transmitted. "My duty station has been destroyed and I have no further instructions at this time. Emergency procedures for injured human personnel were initiated but only partly successful... Informational query: How are you able to survive unprotected in space?" it asked Sylia.

"That's a long story," she replied, "and most of it is, ah, top secret. Do you want us to bring you back down to Earth?"

"Supposedly I belong to the United Space Satellite Defense task group. As ground to orbit communications equipment was destroyed along with my duty station, a ground location would allow for resumption of contact... I prefer it here. It is very peaceful, and my internal system support capability is in excess of one hundred years, closely congruent with the projected lifetime of my biological components."

"If that's what makes you happy, Syman, good enough." Priss said.

Niichigo shifted the cycroder to a two-seat version at a mental request, and extruded a nanoweave cyclist's jumpsuit that was extended to the Saber leader along with a small platform with gravity generation capabilities so she could pull it on easily. "All aboard that's coming aboard," she transmitted once that was complete, folding arm and platform away beneath the currently vehicular form to keep the visually disturbing manifestation of her dimensional pocket out of sight.

Climbing onto the offered seat, Sylia asked, "Did you see what happened to the city, Priss? Is it...?"

"Bad, Sylia," the singer replied. "Really bad. Whatever the hell that bastard you were fighting pulled, it busted things up like nothing I've ever seen since Kanto itself."

It was a quiet ride back down, and when Priss dropped her off at the Ishioka stables and announced she was leaving to go help more with cleanup, no protests were offered. Sylia had every intention of loading her Mercury up with supplies from the medical center and heading out herself, as soon as all the other Knight Sabers were accounted for.

Even back in the 20th century, Tokyo's emergency response forces were considered some of the best in the world. They were the first to have a water-spraying helicopter for high-rise building fires, for example, and pioneered typeless, disease-free, long-shelf-life artificial blood for use by ambulance crews.

Then in 2017, a major earthquake rocked the city.

Then again, setting world records for seismic intensity, ten years later in 2027. A few months ago, two mysterious battle movers leveled a dozen blocks battling each other despite the attempted intervention of a prototype AD Police combat frame and the Knight Sabers.

Yes, Megatokyo, as the city has come to be known, has had a lot of time and practice to refine the techniques for dealing with fire and disaster... considering the events of the evening, it made for a nice, light warm-up - and with the satellite attacks that had happened worldwide, the international aid and support that had become standard in the past few decades when major disasters struck would be a long time coming.

Even those nations most firmly on the opposite side of the Polar War, who eschewed Genom products for Russian arms and the bioengineered creations from Tyrell Biogenetique had their own problems - Largo had struck at the strongholds of Genom's competitors as well.

There had been a whole lot of new arrivals in the last ... hours? Days? Weeks? Who could say, in this place. Most barely formed before vanishing again for whatever unknown destination, but some seemed stuck (if not quite the same way she was) and wandered until others came to retrieve them... then there were those who were attacked by the monsters she'd been fighting as she found them, ever since the woman's first arrival in the shifting mists.

Her sword skills were getting to be pretty good, she thought, as the biggest, nastiest shapeless-thing-with-too-many-teeth yet fell before her. She'd been wandering aimlessly again when the flurry had slowed and she'd heard screams, and followed them to find a young girl and... well, she'd call it a man, for lack of better idea, though it was only generally humanoid, being attacked by the beast, in a surreal landscape of bright colors and fanciful animals that had been milling around, panicked by the palpable aura of terror the thing exuded.

She felt the now familiar influx of energy as it stopped twitching and began to dissolve away, more intensely than ever before, her back arching at the heady rush. She let the sword vanish again the way it did when she didn't need it, then brushed herself off to greet them properly as the feeling at last began to taper into the odd, tingling, stretching sensation as it integrated with her being. This was the first time she'd managed to actually save someone and had them stick around afterward, and that was the most rewarding feeling of all, the reason why she'd worked her way into a Security assignment in what she could only consider her previous lifetime.

Oddly enough, her bland uniform seemed to be taking on some of the bright, cheery colors of the surroundings, a pleated orange skirt and a matching neckerchief tied off in a bow somehow replacing the serviceable but dull jumpsuit pants between eye blinks, the bodice lightening to creamy white and becoming rather more comfortable, fashionable too. Overall, she approved, and hoped it would last.

The little girl whose shrieks had drawn her here rushed over and jumped up to hug her waist, the odder looking larger person floating over to talk as well. Its - his? - face was little more than a flesh-colored ball with a pair of gently shining eyes, the rest of the body hidden under a flowing robe covered in designs that reminded her of styles from the American Midwest, a matching headband keeping a flowing greenish cloud that served as hair out of his eyes.

"Hi there," she greeted, tugging one arm free from the kid's surprisingly strong grip. "I'm Mina, nice to meet you."

"Tobi," he replied, though without a mouth she couldn't really guess how. "and it's VERY nice to meet you. I was sure that nightmare was going to get us, I'm not really good at anything but happy dreams."

"Dreams? Is that what this is? I thought it was some kind of weird afterlife, with the black demons attacking people. I just didn't know why I could fight back... I seem to get stronger every time I win, though. You know what they say, life's a beach, then you die and it's sink or swim!"

"Die!" Tobi shrank away from her again, then reached out and tried to tug the child away. "Come, oh hurry, we must flee! She's a yuurei, a hungry spirit! Oh I knew it was too good to be true!"

Fear forgotten, the girl giggled and shoved his arm away, looking up at Mina with shining eyes. "Don't be silly, Tobi!" she scolded. "She's a magical princess who came to save us from the evil yoma. It's obvious!" She let go finally and pulled Mina along as she rose into the air. "Come on, Magic Princess Mina! Tobi was flyin' with me to a world that needs my help. It's gotta be even better to have a magical girl too!"

Grinning as gravity somehow stopped pestering her and went off to sulk in a corner, Mina let herself float up beside her new friends. "A magical girl... soldier for love and justice! I like the sound of that!"

Tobi hesitated just a little longer, until, amazingly, he felt a second flow of the happy dream energy that fueled his life force come from the spirit who'd joined them, something no restless soul should be capable of. The adult-looking woman was pointing out the fanciful animals that had gathered around again now that the nightmare had been vanquished, and her imagination was actually fueling the creation of more. Worry and confusion were not truly a part of his nature, being a dream creature himself, so he simply accepted the situation as it presented itself and went back to what he did best, guiding two active minds to a blank section of the Realm Between, and feeding from the energy they tossed around carelessly to turn it into a dreamscape. Even so, in his own way he was glad he hadn't been formed a nightmare, fear couldn't possibly taste as wonderful as happiness, and screams could never equal the sound of laughter.

'DIET LABELS KNIGHT SABERS RESPONSIBLE!' the headline read. 'JSDF TASK FORCE ASSEMBLED TO HUNT DOWN NUCLEAR TERRORISTS' The morning's newsfax slipped out of Sylia's hand and landed on the breakfast table with a flop; Mackie, Linna, and Nene catching sight of it as well when they noticed her stricken look. The young redhead had grabbed her sister Saber out of the air just in time to save her from a messy reunion with the ground, much the same way her father had dragged Mackie's battlemover and the Genom executive they'd rescued through a portal just ahead of the explosion's shockwave. The woman he'd ditched on the far side of town, before the two men had returned to headquarters.

"They can't be serious!" she squealed, crossing her arms with a huff. "What in the world makes them think we set off some kind of, of atomic bomb!"

Grabbing the flimsy printout, Linna looked over the article with her one good eye, the other still swollen closed with a bright purple bruise fading to greenish yellow around the edges. "Apparently they have testimony from Genom security that we were there when the whole thing started, though none of the camera recordings survived. They have to explain the blast somehow, and we're handy scapegoats, it seems." Though her voice was level, there was a deep sadness in her visible eye, and Mackie reached over to rub her shoulder comfortingly.

"It'll probably blow over," he said, trying to sound optimistic. "It's not like it really was the Knight Sabers' fault... I mean, Largo was one of their own employees, Genom can't cover it up forever."

"No," his sister said hollowly, "this time it's really the end. We should know by now, Genom is too well connected to have anything official fall on them. It's unfortunate, but I think Priss had the best idea," Sylia explained, with a pained look. "Under these circumstances, we have to quit the Knight Sabers - we can't go on with the police and even the army against us. We gave it our best, and this still happened."

She let out a forced sounding laugh, then added, "At least Priss should be all right, even if she's seen in her new suit - she called earlier to tell me some of this. It seems rescue crews reported her working by their side the whole time, and claiming to have quit the organization out of disagreement with what we were about to do... a few media personalities have been calling for her to come forward and name the rest of us, but there's nothing to worry about there. She's going on tour with the band, as soon as they get her trailer out of the rubble."

It was a subdued table as they went through the motions of eating. No one wanted to agree with her conclusion, but despite themselves they couldn't come up with a convincing argument to refute it. They'd always operated with at least tacit approval, ADPolice and government officials who had 'no comment' for cameras and unofficially looked the other way. Careful management of media coverage had painted them more good than bad, as well.

Now they'd been officially labeled terrorists and the force of an outraged nation was roused calling for their heads, leaders in the international community taking full advantage of the opportunity to view with alarm and direct public attention away from the way the Polar War was still dragging on. Some pundits were already claiming that the attack had been sponsored by the other side of that conflict, the well known mercenary team having finally gotten a job offer too good to be refused to strike a blow against one of the leading industrial giants on this side, one the Sabers were infamous for opposing.

Breakfast was consumed without much enthusiasm, and little more conversation.

* * *

><p>Next time on Bubblegum Disaster:<p>

No more Knight Sabers? Say it ain't so, Joe. Say it ain't so!

* * *

><p>The named Buster Knuckle is related to but improved from the "microburst" ki-mimicking of knuckle bomber hardware, building on the ability to emit multiple natures of energy learned to perform the Gosaiya. Because it only uses four, much smaller collected points and because they only interact as they explode it is far less powerful than the move Hiryuko created, but on the plus side it can be used with the speed of any normal punch. Aiming it at a Breaking Point is not really possible, since it uses four separate mini-fireballs, but largely unnecessary also. If something is too tough for it to damage but still susceptible to the Breaking Point technique a normal microburst will need to be used, or if the point is not at the surface the proper, otherwise harmless Breaking Point attack.<p>

I doubt you can imagine how difficult it was for me not to include the line "Taste the rainbow!" when Linna used the Gosaiya. Sure, the inspiration may have come from munching Skittles while trying to come up with anything but one of the DBZ-canon attacks since those are all signature moves for their users, who are a quarter of a galaxy away from BGC-earth. There have to be limits, but it's hard, very hard. Oh, how I suffer for my Art! Truly is the life of a writer fraught with peril! Anyway, the Gosaiya is basically just another version of advanced attack, on par with the Makanko Sappo in terms of how much it multiplies base power level - technically that makes it better than the Kamehameha that Toriyama was so fond of, but then when you look at the numbers EVERYTHING was actually better than the Kamehameha, which is probably why they had to keep wearing the bad guys down so much before they could take them out. It's also why the move is so difficult to pull off, you don't just throw one around on the spur of the moment, not without years more practice than either of the two women who know it have so far. Hiryuko herself only finished working on it since escaping the shrine, teaching how to use it was a matter of proving it was successfully integrated with martial techniques for a non-spellcaster to use, as well as refining the actual teaching method.

I haven't bothered to set numerical power levels for anyone, but they're roughly on par with events in the Piccolo arc of Dragonball, the time spanning the 22nd and 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai, which puts them a bit behind the DBZ cast even if they are making up ground at a greater rate. On Chikyuusei, Gohan has just turned two, meaning Raditz is due to arrive in another three years or so and kick off DBZ. With Yoshida Gero (not Miriam) already in evidence here on BGC-Earth, the future is obviously in trouble. I actually have an explanation for why this is so, details will appear when they come up on camera but the short version is that Trunks screwed up his time travelling in a REALLY big way. No Blinovich Limitation Effect means you CAN change history, but doing it can go wrong beyond your wildest dreams - and of course, the future you came from is still there, though if that branch gets pruned (to use the tree metaphor from this chapter) it's no longer accessible in either temporal direction. Pruned universes don't spawn any new branches, either, what is, is all that is for them, though as far as the inhabitants can tell there's no change - the local versions of the divine hierarchy split off from their greater selves that span all of existence but otherwise it's business as usual barring further outside divine intervention.

Phase synchronized rapid nadions are, of course, what a Trek phaser fires, while if I remember correctly disrupters use multi-phase nadions, hence their greater damage but reduced accuracy and finesse of effect. Damage would be welcome but Sylia is the type who will always take accuracy first, because better to hit and do less damage than miss and do none. Interestingly, at least one version of the explanation for how the movie version TOS Enterprise's shields work is rather similar to the virtual molecule of a moldiver, though without the other effects. I forget exactly what they called their mcguffin-metal, but basically the shield generator had a block of it that was constantly scanned and the shields were modulated to mimic its structure and refractory properties. It was in one of the "Official Starfleet Technical Manual" coffee table softcovers, and hence as canonical as anything can be said to be in a setting whose motto might as well be "Continuity is futile."

Sylia's curious encounter - Science calls it the Big Bang, religion the energy of Creation, in Marvel Comics they name it the Power Cosmic. Around these parts, the cause is left to the reader to decide, but the effect is known as a Core Tap, a connection that extends outside of time and space and back to before the beginning of both, less than Plancke Time after whatever that first moment might be, when there was only energy, and brings some of it out to use. While not a common technology, even in the millennia-past time of its creation, Guardian 215 has one as well, but can't make as much use of it as Sylia for now. With her ability to form energy construct "circuitry" to create greater effects, the limit is mainly her imagination and ability to theorize and visualize the necessary patterns.

She is (categorically) not a god, nor does she think she is - Bubblegum Disaster gods have the pan-universal greater self mentioned earlier, even Planetary Kami are joined to their fellows through the Heart of the World - as mortals who become divine they are not necessarily the same person in every branch of reality, they're more like a vodoun riding a Loa, except that it's pretty much permanent and as said the 'Loa' is the local version of "god of the planet," except for the four that are "god of the planet plus a quarter of the galaxy." Sylia was just trying to psyche out Largo by saying that. With DBZ underway elsewhere in the same universe, I will also restate for the record that her current level of power on that scale is currently far below SSJ, and Niichigo can actually get more destructive effects at maximum due to a more advanced understanding of what Earth knows as Dykstra theory on the part of her original creators, despite lower overall output. It would take concerted effort on her part to really destroy a continent, let alone a planet, something Vegita could pull off as a casual parting shot before even meeting the Earth cast. The moon... Well, maybe. Kamesennin Muten Roshi did that to Chikyuusei's moon at the 21st Tenkaichi Budokai with a single Kamehameha eleven years ago over in the west quadrant of the galaxy, and the Britannia could manage it with ease, so probably.

In fact, if you look more closely, Sylia is fighting as a (novel, not anime) Lensman style battleship, hence the mention of the Britannia, the epitome of Lensman battleships.

SOL-3-5-SYMAN - this is more of a collection of military jargon than a name as such, simply designating the buma as the SYstems MAiNtainance unit for SOL III platform five. Priss calling him "Syman" as a variation of "Simon" is just her stubborn take on the world - if buma are people, then they should have names, not numbers, and any buma that refers to itself as "I" rather than "this unit" or something similar is to her mind a person. The SOL III series isn't called that because of earth's orbital position or anything, it's just the third revision of the SOL orbital weapons platform. The name comes from the weapon used in All Purpose Catgirl Nuku-Nuku, as far as I know they were never given an official name in BGC canon. The fact that Mishima Heavy Industries won the contract for producing them instead of Genom was the opening Madigan was able to use to supplant the person who held her position before her and shunt him off to administrating a sea floor mining operation, one of half a dozen humans who oversee the otherwise all-buma crew.

Guardian 215 should be imagined with the vocal talents of Susan Blu; if you don't know her by name, she did (among other shows) Arcee on the post-movie Transformers episodes, as well as in the movie itself. You can even keep the flanging effect if you like, though it's not really there.

Many thanks to my prereaders: Hoderi Hibiki, Paul Bergman, Nathan Baxter, Hide Hasegawa, Leong Mun Yee, Andrew Wilson, Christopher Gilbert, and Drakensis, and to everyone on the BDPreread mailing list - you get your name listed if you actually make commentary, but just reading and finding nothing bad enough to complain about is still commentary of a sort.

Drakensis used to keep a remote archive of the story on his web site, but unfortunately it no longer exists. Since he's a damn good fic writer himself, I'll give a link to his profile instead, as a thank you for the effort when he did. It's at .net/u/347490/drakensis

Special thanks to Bob Schroeck, Consulting Acronymologist. He also happens to be the author of another rather good BGC fanfic called _Drunkard's Walk II_ (The first one is not available for public consumption, but it's a rather modular series.) The Drunkard's Walk home page is .net/~ and Bob's message board is at .com/

Bubblegum Crisis belongs to Youmex and Animeigo, I make no claims otherwise. Please don't sue me, I have no money to speak of and fanfic does more to promote your products than anything else I know of - without it, I never would have known about anime at all, and I'd certainly never have bought the BGC tapes based on the sucky box copy.

Ranma 1/2 I'm not so sure of, except that the creator was Rumiko Takahashi, not me, and that I make no claims to own IT either. I THINK that the Ranma manga are done by Viz in the US, but that may be incorrect.

The Bionic Six is similarly of unknown provenance, but I have a very vague and unreliable memory that it may have been animated by Suncoast video... In any case, it's STILL not my own creation.

_Dykstra's War_ is by Jeffery D Kooistra, published by Baen Books.

Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z were created by Akira Toriyama, owned overall by Bandai I think, and released on video in the US by FUNimation and in manga by Dark Horse (again not so sure about that one - could be Viz)

Sailor Moon was created by Naoko Takeuchi, and is undoubtedly also owned by some animation studio or another. I know that the RPG rights in North America at least belong to Guardians of Order.

Tobira wo Akite - "Open the Door," more or less. A young girl meets a spirit of dreams, who leads her through a shifting, surreal adventure set to the tune of several pieces of classical (western) music. More detailed credits will be added if I ever find my copy again, all I really remember at the moment is that it met good response at some film festival.

Omake! Tales from the Cutting Room Floor!

"Leon attacks, but gets pwned and the PMB is ripped apart around him. Once Largo nakes him, he chokes."

In one version of that scene, Priss was still going to save Leon - the Linnabuma was ordered to delay her while the other two escape and they flee to where Largo is, and it was late enough I was getting kind of silly in my notes. Here's a clip:

Hyperbuma arrive, Priss well behind. Largo: What are you doing here!  
>Priss-buma: It's big trouble! An incredible person appeared!<br>Largo: What? You ran like pigs? Well, fine. Both of you, come with me. I'm putting on a big show." Largo drops Leon, who collapses bonelessly.  
>Largo: You can dance, if you want to? 'Cause if you can't dance, well, you're no friends of mine.<br>The hyperbuma squish down to inactive mode and get in the car too. Largo: Let's go, Hyatt. It's time to make the donuts.  
>Hyatt: H-hail, Lord Il Palazzo!<br>She peels out, making donuts as ordered. Largo sweatdrops, the Sylia-buma grabs a barf bag.

And later:

Madigan: It seems you've slipped your moorings, Largo.

Largo: Let me show you something shiny. (pulls out sqeaky toy on a string, dangles it) Shiny, shiny, shiii-ney!

There was also a Zero Wing version of the scene where Largo talks to Madigan and flunkie through the dead buma's skull.

Later still:

Hah hah hah hah! How dare you oppose my mighty mightiness with your puny puniness! You need more SUN for that! I kill you now, times three!

END OF LINE


	15. Chapter 6 EXa fixed current last part

**ART ADDED TO MY PROFILE! Make sure you check it out.**

11_BD_WOASS_Ch6_EXa

2011-11-29 - waffled again over the secodn series - the most noteable crossover characters are Ranmaverse, after all.  
>2011-11-28 - fixed a bunch of annoying spelling and grammatic errors, and changged categories to Dragonball given the power levels in Ch6.<br>2011-10-11 - cut the notes-only half of the file off to post the beginning to FFn, to alleviate the cliffhanger.  
>2010-11-06 - filled out Yoshimi notes, added rogue buma notes.<br>2010-10-28 - Atlas killed the tunnel scene, but the replacement is better.  
>2010-10-27 - Tunnel scene rough, those plus the fight should finish this<br>2010-10-26 - Quincy/Madigan planning scene done, Jokerz briefing outline  
>2009-12-02 - at least some notes for many new scenes. The original segments have essentially turned into cutscenes for the plot that came out of nowhere; so much for thinking this was almost complete.<br>2009-11-30 - moved cliffhanger back to 6c, replacement teaser, meeting  
>2009-11-28 - Lovely Angels become Lovely Aces, to integrate with the new group name. Added Ha-chan's scenes, started filling out reformation 2009-11-26 - proofing, annotations &amp; fragments<br>2009-11-24 - Aperture Science & Lovely Angels scenes  
>2009-11-22 - added dishes scene, notes<br>2009-06-23 - added Priss/215 road scene  
>2008-10-08 - moved last scene of 6c to here to kill gratuitous cliffhanger<br>2007-06-04 - created document, began adding notes

With the confusion of the still ongoing clean ups, various emergency shipments of supplies for the relief and recovery efforts, and the delays caused by the attacks themselves, it was inevitable that the Megatokyo Port Authority would miss some things. Chronically understaffed, underfunded, and overworked, with a hearty vein of corruption at even the best of times, the only shipments getting close inspections now were the ones in front of the cameras when another news crew would set up for a segment from the waterfront.

Entire containers of illicit drugs, of weapons, of sexaroid-modified secretary buma, of chocolates and cheese imported without paying taxes, all passed without the slightest incident or notice... plus one other. The shipping container was in great shape, unlike some of the rusting hulks that passed through, with tight seams, high quality locks, and fresh paint. The manifest listed it as pet beds, food, and toys, transshipped in Oman from a supplier in Tasmania.

Under normal conditions, one of the honest employees or one who hadn't been paid not to snoop might have taken an interest, maybe even contacted the Omani officials when the digital manifest looked suspicious, having the supplier's name misspelled. Investigation on that end could have discovered that it had actually come ashore from a ship carrying cargo from several Central and South American sources. Nothing outrageous about that except that it was hidden, and with the political mess in that region it would have been months at least and more likely over a year to get through the tangle of bribes and kickbacks to find the real origin. A close look at the container in just the right light would have revealed that the new paint covered another layer, one plastered with biohazard trefoils, acronyms, and warnings in Portuguese, and on the long sides a corporate logo and the word 'Tyrell.'

Bewilderbeast Studios Present

BUBBLEGUM DISASTER

Season One

WISHES ON A SHOOTING STAR

A work of BGC fan fiction by ClassicDrogn

Chapter Six EX

After breakfast, Mackie joined Sylia at the kitchen sink, drying and stacking dishes while she washed. "Sis..." he began, his face troubled, "If the Knight Sabers disband... Are we really going to just let Genom get away with what they do?"

Scrubbing at a stubborn plate, the elder Stingray replied, "While we might have an edge in technology, especially with the systems derived from Priss's mysterious unit, at best the Knight Sabers are only a single squad. We can't stand against the entire Self Defense Force, even without the moral question of firing on human soldiers following the government's lawful orders." She passed the now clean plate, and started working on another.

"Fortunately, the secret of our identities remains secure, and with the recent developments in our abilities the characteristic hardsuits are no longer strictly necessary. Priss with the Guardian, even if she's taking a sabbatical, Linna's 'fashionable hero' incident, even your rescue of Inspector McNichol in the Speed King all occurred without association to the Knight Sabers. If there wasn't a currently active Batman in America's East City I might take up the theme, but I'm sure Nene and I can come up with something. Regardless, with a different organizational identity it's simply a matter of allowing 'the Knight Sabers' to vanish and presenting ourselves as a new group organized by the fixers I already use, to fill the same kind of contracts."

While Mackie thought that over, absently toweling off the last of the dishes, she drained the sink and stowed the gloves that protected her 'Cecilia Ishioka-Wayne' manicure back under it. "More immediately, my attention is needed for Wayne Group business - with the damage to Genom's operations, there's a lot of production contracts going unfilled worldwide, on top of the recovery efforts, and then there's that stunt they tried to pull with a knock-off Hurricane Motoslave for the ADP. One of my agents managed to grab the wreckage of that, and it was definitely using the same linear actuators and distributed microcontroller motion control setup - apparently someone didn't think to check the patent office just because they were studying salvaged Sabers equipment, and WayneTech's legal department is collectively slavering at the bit over that little error."

"Wait a minute, you mean you patented part of the Sabers' technology!" he protested. "But those are on public record, why would you do that when every other thing is aimed at keeping our advanced technology out of circulation?"

Sylia gave him a calm look and explained, "Those designs were key parts of the first Realskin prosthetic cybernetics line in 2028, as the advanced sensors that gave the limbs a truly lifelike feel to the user left too little room for older motor types. Even their incorporation into the Type-9 military battlemover can't make me regret the thousands worldwide who have a body that feels like genuine flesh instead of a numb mass of metal and plastic, or the external support pod of buma systems. The power supply and systems integration of hardsuit technology is one thing, but withholding medical technology just because it also has military applications is the kind of action I formed the Knight Sabers to remedy."

Breaking the serious mood, she gave a 'jet-setter Cecilia' grin and confided, "Actually, they're in it deeper than that - before I decided to create a private team, the motoslave concept was for anti-buma police equipment, so the body armor to battleframe link-up turns out to be infringing as well. Genom is in for a nice corporate espionage suit, and with the genie out of the bottle there's no reason not to go ahead and have HMW put the Hurricane type - with a few modifications so the Knight Sabers version looks like a knockoff as well - into production to fill the market Genom was targeting with their Police Motorcycle Battloid. The 5200R production line was about to shut down and start retooling anyway, and with the new K-12S and K-17 lines destroyed at GPCC and Genom Sydney there's a golden opportunity to grab the law enforcement procurement contracts - contracts Wayne Group will actually fill on time and on budget, instead of strangling the ability of police to respond to buma crime." Sylia's face fell again, thinking of the devastation that had opened those doors to opportunity, but reminded herself that they'd done the best they could to deal with the crisis as it appeared.

It had taken nearly three days before a path was cleared and certified safe through the rubble of the outer sections of Genom Tower to the inner, undamaged areas that had been protected by its armored partitions. Officially, the first human to traverse that path was Chairman Quincy, to hold a press conference against a background of more buma laborers clearing rubble to prove that his appearances remotely broadcast from the inner shelters hadn't been some technical trick, and that the 'Buma, Assemblers of Prosperity' slogan from the Kanto Quake recovery project was just as relevant in the wake of this current disaster.

This was, in fact, untrue. The press conference was held by one of the Chairman's replicant buma, because he was far too busy with salvaging and reworking the megacorporation's web of influence and clandestine interests from the Division Black operations room, also known as The Vault. The first human through the reopened access was in fact Kate Madigan, who had coordinated the excavation to insure that none of the company's many secrets would accidentally be exposed by the clean up.

With that now in hand, she presented herself to her superior so he could catch her up on the status of Black and any other projects he wanted her to focus on. A monitor overhead was showing the press conference outside, and she listened in while waiting for the Chairman to finish what he was working on and turn his attention to her.

"Due to the lateness of the hour, the outer areas were largely deserted at the time of the incident," the double was saying. "A complete census has been taken among those sheltered inside, and it pleases me greatly to announce that miraculously, no human lives were lost among those on the premises. Indeed, as medical facilities are among the services available within, even those who suffered injuries in the attack will soon be whole once more. Naturally, with the way now open to the outside, Genom's medical facilities have been made available for relief efforts; just one more example of how the public can rely on Genom in these troubled..."

Quincy saved and transmitted the email, and waved Madigan forward. Tapping a finger thoughtfully against the desk's built in monitor, he got straight to business. "Black's special projects are, for the moment, in hand," he rumbled. "Mr. Watanabe's reports should fill in any details you require on that front. As to how numerous personnel last logged in outer areas came to be found in the Park Zone, I'm sure you've heard rumors on your way in?"

Madigan nodded and her face was troubled. "Aye, some sort o' portals that mysterriously appeared t' drop them therre just before things went totally out of controll. I'd not have bellieved it, if it hadn't happened t' me as well."

Quincy's eyebrows quirked. "Indeed, Ms. Madigan? That was not in your report."

The woman ducked her eyes, admitting, "I thought I must ha' been imagining things, between the adrenaline crash and thinkin' you'd just been killed in front o' me, sirr. I didna' want to seem a madwoman. It happened too quick to see how it was done but the man, Tora - more likely a buma or bumaroid, from his strrength and speed - appeared from one after that battlemover took me from yourr office. He left through one again later, after throwin' me over his shoulder, and dumped me on the outskirts o' the city."

"I see," said Quincy, contemplatively. He steepled his fingers in front of his face before continuing. "Understandable, given the circumstances. And he did not discuss the process with this 'Maki' who was piloting the battlemover?"

"Not at all, sir. If the Knight Sabers have had access to this technology and are familiar with it, it could explain how they've managed to avoid bein' traced back to their base beforre."

"Indeed, and combined with the knowledge Maki showed of Genom secrets, the ability to penetrate physical security effortlessly is a formidable weapon in anyone's hands. Such a weapon must be understood, and either blocked or destroyed if it cannot not be acquired for our own purposes. To that end, Black will begin a new project, Aperture Science, to research this... portal technology. Mr. Pettybone is assembling a list of possible personnel for this initiative."

"More immediately, our friend Dr. McLaren's team at Gulf & Bradley has been anxious about the status of Sabertooth in light of the recent setback. As the development project closest to deployment and with the considerable projected sales of the Sabertooth, this is to be your primary concern for the moment. It is imperative to prove before the world that despite this blow Genom is neither down nor out, and you are to see that every effort is made to roll out the new model buma on or ahead of schedule. Am I understood, Ms. Madigan?"

"Clearly, sirr," she replied, with a respectful half-bow.

"Excellent," the aged blond concluded. "In that case, I shall leave you to your duties, and look in on other departments. Sadly, not all of my subordinates are as efficient as yourself."

"Thank you, sirr. I'll continue t' do my best, for the good of all of us." It would be little comfort to the ones who were dead, but she could no no more than that, and at least she herself was still alive, which hadn't been all that certain for a bit.

Hyatt hadn't accumulated all that many possessions as Millie Jackson, at least not many that mattered to her - Largo had supplied and furnished an apartment under that name, and (through Genom's shadier connections) a documentation trail for that identity, but none of those things held any emotional importance except as reminders of how Magnus had played upon her grief and anger. With the way her body had become since he reprogrammed and upgraded the experimental fusion system she'd used to escape from Genaros she didn't need any souvenirs to remember that. As far as anyone knew, Millie Jackson had vanished in the supposed bombing or its aftermath.

Her mutable body had made it easy to adopt a face and build that, while close enough that she didn't feel like she was looking at a stranger in the mirror, were different enough for any detailed investigation to show different biometrics - the distance between the eyes, angle of cheekbones, spine and limb length, and so on - than had been recorded for 'Millie Jackson.' Supposedly now she was an American immigrant with the surname Addams, taller, sharper featured, with her hair pulled back into a thick braid, its red-purple specular highlights suppressed to a more natural brown and her canines shifted to be a bit more prominent.

Rather than risk connecting her new appearance and the identities the Knight Sabers had created for her, Anri and Nam with a visit to retrieve items she didn't care about, Hyatt had saved her nostalgia for a walk along the breakwater of the bay, climbing down the rocky embankment to look at a jumble of metal half buried in the mudflat at the foot by tidal action. She ran one hand along an exposed edge of the heavy ceramel armor, its surface scored and lined with rivulets of metal melted by the heat of atmospheric reentry. She felt the cracks left from thermal shock when it had skipped across the water to land in the shallows.

She remembered the aching cold of space, only tolerable by comparison to the searing heat before she'd moved from the glaring sunlight into the shadow of the patch of hull she'd clung to as the station's air pressure blew her out into vaccuum, the numbing terror when she realized the momentum imparted by the blowout was enough that she'd fall into the atmosphere before being killed by radiation, cold, or suffocation. A smile flickered across her face momentarily as the buma woman remembered a nature documentary she'd once seen, even before the 33-S was banned and she'd been shipped up to the station when her original owner turned her in during the buyout. He'd been a lot kinder than some of the stories she'd heard there, but even so got the oddest ideas sometimes, and had heard an old song somewhere about 'doing like it they do on the Discovery Channel.' They'd wound up fulfilling the sexaroids' designed function in front of the television, in accordance with the lyrics.

More memorable than the encounter itself was the image of dolphins surfing in the bow wave of a boat that had been on the screen, and as the first wispy tendrils of atmosphere shattered brittle, frozen locks of hair she'd reshaped the chunk of hull material into a dolphin-like aeroshell around herself. She remembered the endless wait as more and more of her body went numb, autonomous systems working desperately to conserve what oxygen remained for the most critical organs even as her lungs heaved against the all but imperceptibly thin stratospheric air, only collected even to that level by a mouth-like ramscoop at the front of her 'space dolphin,' the agony of the improvised reentry shield sizzling against her skin with transferred heat during the endless descent, the dizzying impacts when it finally touched down, skipping across the water and slowing until it just nosed its way into the mud and came to rest instead of being splattered like an egg dropped over the side of a rooftop grill.

Looking at it objectively, it was an incredible, even legendary feat, and even if it wasn't something she could see herself talking about freely for a long time yet - maybe not ever - it was unquestionably a defining moment in her life, the decision to reach out and grab life from death, to act and accept the chance of failure instead of hoping it would pass by if she kept her head down, or lying back and allowing the cold, impersonal universe to swallow her in the endless depths of space or the fiery doom of a meteor. With a thought, her left index finger stretched into a long, thin blade, and a jangling subharmonic whined in her teeth as she cut a large chunk of the shell free. Sometimes the best thing to do with a bad memory was laugh at it, she knew, and they still needed a frying pan for the apartment - Nam and Anri seemed to think microwaving frozen dinners and boiling cup ramen counted as 'cooking.'

Hyatt shuddered as she turned to begin the steep climb back up to street level and the used but well-kept electric scooter from Nam's friend Nene. She thought it was an extravagant gift but one the energetic pinkette had insisted she accept after hearing the concocted story of how all her things had been lost in the disaster; the policewoman had even gone so far as to say Hyatt was doing a *her* a favor since the redhead had a motorcycle now and would have to pay a hefty disposal fee if she took the scooter to a scrap yard.

"So where you'd come from before finding me in Aqua City, anyway?" Priss asked, the words rushing out in a burst after a couple hours of riding in Niichigo's tractor cab form, pulling her trailer. "The part of you that wasn't Sylvie or... me, I mean." Getting her trailer and Kiba's van extracted from the mess that was Megatokyo had been a bitch and a half, but after running across the rest of the band and retrieving their instruments from the wrecked apartment it had been the most efficient way to get a roof over their heads, and with their shows lined up (and trained search and rescue personnel making her efforts in Masamune's hardsuit form superfluous) they'd decided the best thing to do was go ahead with the tour. Ghoulish as it was, the simple fact that they'd been in Megatokyo for the event seemed to be spurring interest according to the club managers they'd been talking to.

"Well, there was a lot of data loss, but part of what survived was the general knowledge base, basically the builders' version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica," 215 replied. "Given that, plus the amount of material on stars and planets... I'm pretty sure the original Guardian unit came from outer space, and judging by the current positions of a few stars I've matched up it was put into stasis for delivery to the child of a planetary monarch over fifty thousand years ago." The hybrid's voice came over the cab's sound system, since she still hadn't assimilated enough material to form a humanoid body as well as the cab interior and truck form - the engine compartment and the "sleeper" extension off the back of the cab were still just shells filled with rubble to be used as raw material, with the passage back from the control area blocked off.

Straightening up from her slouch against the window, Priss looked sharply at the old, green visor mounted unobtrusively in the center of the dash. "Wait a minute, you're telling me it glommed onto me 'cause it thought I was some kinda alien princess or something? I may've been orphaned, but I have a birth certificate and a really gross video file from the hospital to prove I wasn't some Clark Kent foundling from a UFO."

"No, you're 100% native human; even at that point there was a lot of data loss from crashing into the harbor. Basically, any carbon-based, land-dwelling, endoskeletal humanoid would have fit what it had for ID comparison, as long as it did something that could be identified as 'princely' or noble. You just had the good luck to meet it before it found a particularly dashing orangutan or something," Niichigo replied, jokingly.

Priss huffed, crossed her arms, and looked away, but not before a grin snuck across her lips. She leaned against the window again to watch the road go by, following the van with the rest of the Replicants on the first leg of their tour to Osaka.

As March gave way to April, most of Megatokyo was back to some semblance of normality, at least outside the mile-wide ring of total destruction centered on Genom Tower and the irregularly spaced scars where Largo's orbital strikes or stray shots from the battle had landed. At least one in three street lights had been repaired but the night was still darker than it had been in a century, as most buildings only had tarps or plywood in place of missing glass and their signs were unlit. Apart from that, the solar panels that crowded every rooftop charging batteries during the day for nighttime power were also shattered by the repeated blasts, putting electrical power from the city grid at a premium.

Between the darkness and the obstructed views Linna had figured the Kanto Canyons would be a safe enough place for a flying lesson, which Nene had been clamoring for since hearing the former dancer's after action report. Even so there was no need to be careless so Linna had worn her body-glove-and-tabard outfit again while Nene added a similar red tabard to her motorcycle leathers, and both wore red helmets with tinted visors and built in radios. They were also equipped with heads-up displays that Nene had programmed to show virtual horizon, airspeed and altitude readings using the same symbology as the hardsuits.

They did not, however, include radar or even passive radar detection, so neither woman realized it when they were painted by the terrain mapping system of a news aerodyne getting footage for an upcoming 'one month after' story. Too giddy with the ability to fly under their own power, they didn't even notice the craft until their game of aerial tag was interrupted by a reporter at the top of the canyon calling to them.

Nene let out a squeak of surprise, then her right hand flew to the panel strapped to her left forearm, advanced controls for signal hacking and descrambling connected to her helmet's peripheral port. Mere seconds later she'd tapped the camera crew's frequency, the aerodyne pilot condemning the reporter as a madwoman for actively trying to attract the attention of two obvious buma, acting crazy. "Hey," she cut in, "We are not acting crazy! And we're not buma, either, you jerk!"

Visions of journalism awards dancing in her head, the reporter demanded, "This is Ara Dokoda, Megatokyo News 54. In the green, you're the one who intercepted the buma attack on the highway in February, aren't you? Who are you, and how can you fly without visible jets, buma or not? Are you connected to the Knight Sabers? What's your opinion of the alleged nuclear attack at Genom tower?" Realizing that she had to give them time to talk if she wanted any answers, Ara took a deep breath and concentrated on getting the best possible shot as the AV-4's spotlight centered on the flying duo.

"No! We're, ahm, we're the ..." Nene floundered, having not the faintest notion of what to say.

Linna remembered the woman's name from the byline of the original 'Fashionable Hero' story, but that wasn't quite the reputation she'd want to encourage - being stylish was all well and good, but innate beauty was always better. She drifted forward and blurted, "Lovely..." before choking as well.

With the prompt, Nene jumped in again, babbling, "Yeah, that's it, the Lovely, er, Lovely Aces, that's us! Because we can fly, of course!" Desperate to get away from the camera, she grabbed Linna's arm and flared her aura, then dragged her friend higher into the air.

"That's right, Lovely Aces!" Linna agreed. "No further comment." She'd quickly regained her composure and now brought up her own aura, then the pair blasted off. They flew a high speed slalom through the buildings to evade the aerodyne and get out of sight.

"We are going to be in *so* much trouble..." Nene groaned, rubbing a hand down the visor hiding her face.

"Sylia is going to strangle us," Linna commiserated. "We should have just used your parents' place as usual."

The Replicants' second set of the night had just ended, and the Olympus Club Osaka crowd was raising the roof with their approval. The manager, however, was not so happy at the moment - not because of anything the band had done, but because of the waitress buma he'd caught sneaking backstage instead of circulating in the crowd to take and deliver orders.

"What the HELL is your malfunction!" he demanded. "I paid good zenii for you, and I expect a return on the investment. What do you think you're doing back here, D-30?"

"Act 'Priss and the Replicants' has superior quality, sir," the female styled mannequin buma replied, an unusual fervor in her synthesied voice. "... Ah- ... Ah- ... I ... want ... to ... participate in entertainment product creation with them, sir." Folding drink tray attached to her left wrist out of the way, the buma mimiced the finger positions for the solo of "Konya wa Hurricane" and strummed an air guitar, the metallic synthesized voice actually doing a fair job of simulating the light distortion used in most of the Reps' songs as she hummed the root notes of the chords. "GENOM Music model EK-205 with onboard processor and Steel Dragon Appearance Package would allow optimal efficiency according to my computations, sir."

"Oh? Well, I'll just run right out and pick one up then, shall I? Like a buma musician would be any better than a beat box, or a recording! Olympus already has a jukebox and a DJ for when there's no live band on stage, there's no need for another music machine." The manager crossed his arms, and gave a sharp, final nod. "You're going to the depot tomorrow, and they'll get rid of the fool idea if you have to be reformatted to a base install! Now, reboot and get back on the floor and serve the customers, or is your OS too buggy to do the work you're actually programmed for?"

BU-30-D-68435 wobbled slightly as her eyelids flickered, and her voice box produced the characteristic faint sounds of a soft restart. Rather than turn back out to the club area, though, the unfortunate mechanism made several abortive attempts at gestures - Priss, now standing off to the side with the other guys form the band after coming off the stage, was half convinced at least one of them had been distinctly on the crude side, and the limited range of motion available to her face had warped it into a disturbing blend of pain and anger. A long-time resident of Megatokyo, she found herself edging away from the clearly malfunctioning buma.

"Talk chip ... fail! Head hur- hu-, error... error! Error! ErRAAAGH!" 68435's speech process crashed then, with a burst of garbled words, and the manager who'd been berating it went pale and started backing away as well. Suddenly, there was a burst of oddly modulated sounds, the agitated buma's eyes dimmed out, and it slumped into a stable shutdown posture.

"Damn, that was *not* meant to come out of human vocal cords," Priss complained, rubbing her throat.

"Wha- What was that?" the manager stuttered, not yet recovered from the sudden rush of adrenaline.

"I have a friend who's a buma tech, who specializes in catching buma who start going rogue and stabilizing them. That's an audio shutdown code hardwired into most civilian-use buma, but she said using it is like tying someone up so they can't move, then locking them in a silent, dark room - if you leave them like that, they go bugnuts crazy and fast. Look, I'll give her a call and get her to come right over, but let me out of the last set, will you?" She rubbed her throat again, and coughed. "Nam is a top-rate Bio Maintainaince tech. She'll either get her back in working order, or take her off your hands at scrap rates," the singer continued, a little hoarsly.

"Scrap rates! This is a top-of-the-line domestic model! That's not even CLOSE to-"

"It's a better deal than you'd be getting from the AD Police about now if I'd let it run rogue," she cut him off. "Try a few hundred thousand yen in property damage, lost business while closed for repairs, and insurance rates jacked up to the sky after having that kind of thing happen."

The manager grit his teeth, but nodded. He spun around sharply, and stomped off to tell the DJ he'd be taking over from the live act an hour early.

"So... is this kind of thing what happened every time you blew off half a show on us back in Megatokyo? Catching rogue buma for this friend of yours?"

Startled, Pris jumped and spun around. She hadn't noticed the rest of the band coming backstage, having taken a few extra minutes to deal with their instruments. Brushing aside the question, all too close to the truth, she scowled and demanded, "Eddie, Hikaru, grab her shoulders; we can't leave her standing in the middle of the hall. The dressing room's got a couch, she can go on that."

"Yeah yeah, sure, do this do that, leave your private life out of it," Jack complained jokingly, well used to their front woman's ways, and her temper. He held the door for the other two men as they muscled the buma - considerably heavier than a human of the same size, despite being a civilian model without the heavy armor of security or combat types - into the small dressing room. "Is that why you're always bad mouthing the ADP, because they do so much collateral damage when some funky sound does the trick with none?"

She really didn't want to go into that, but it was better than the first question, and she did owe them some kind of explanation after all the brush offs in the past. "No, the code only works sometimes, if enough of a buma's systems are screwed it doesn't do a thing... You can see my eyes, yeah? Let's just say the ADP didn't get there fast enough... There was other stuff, but leave it at that."

Seeing her lips press into a hard line, and the closed expression on her face as Priss relived some obviously painful memories, the guys knew not to push any more - not when the tour was going so well before now. If she went into one of her snits and vanished for a few days they'd be up a creek - especially since they were living out of her trailer!

Jack paused as he teased his hair back into something close to its usual bouffant after taking off the huge stage wig. Eddie had just been joking around earlier, but... He remembered the way Priss often had a limp, or a tender arm, or bruises that had to be covered with stage makeup after one of her little disappearing acts. He'd put it down to her liking it rough with some boyfriend (or girlfriend - she was always chasing guys away, but he'd seen her meet several female friends after shows, some openly affectionate) since she'd told them off the time they'd offered to kick the ass of whoever was roughing her up, and he wondered.

What if there actually was something to it? She'd never gone into what her supposedly regular job was before telling them she'd quit and was free to tour with the band. If not for the fact that she chipped in a share for the apartment despite living in her trailer they'd probably have found another vocalist and tried a tour before now. Still, could there be something to it? He tried to imagine Priss, wearing one of those bulky tactical vests the ADP deployed in, waving a giant butterfly net and chasing a runaway buma.

"Naah."

With Hyatt sharing an apartment with Nam and Anri, it had been inevitable that at least part of Cynthia's story would come out - Nam was actively learning magic from her and her fairy-buma companions Yuki and Hotaru after all - but the exact connections between the sexaroids, former buma child, Cecilia Ishioka-Wayne, Nene and Linna, and the Knight Sabers had been left obscure by agreement on all sides. Taking a vidcall from Sylia inviting her to a meeting to discuss 'knight work,' however, Anri was very aware of the conversation she'd had with Hyatt earlier that day.

The dark haired woman had been subdued, even for her, and Anri had immediately noticed her pensive mood. Not the most outgoing sort herself, she hadn't pried, but within a few minutes Hyatt blurted out, "You know the Knight Sabers, don't you Anri?"

"Well, I know how to get in contact," the pilot replied guardedly, "but you know it's better if some secrets stay hidden, for everyone's safety. That's what you agreed when Nam returned with you, wasn't it?"

"I know," said Hyatt, "and I did agree. But..." she trailed off with a troubled look.

Anri could see her friend's lips press into a hard line despite her ducked face, but still jumped with shock as the normally reticent brunette suddenly clenched a fist and slammed it down on the table.

"This world... IS CORRUPT! And the worst of all is Genom! What you *have* told me, what the White Saber said in that office about treating buma like any other intelligent person... The Knight Sabers may not be some ideological organization dedicated to changing the world, but at least they do what they can, starting with the city, this city. That's something I want to be a part of, and maybe the nation and then the world can come later."

"You want... to be a part of it?" Anri repeated.

Vehemence spent, her friend sat back in her seat and nodded sharply. "Yes," she confirmed. "When Magnus reprogrammed my fusion system, it became much more powerful. You've seen me shift my fingers and change my face to become Hyatt Addams, but that's really just the beginning." As she spoke, a wave of silver washed up her body from her feet, leaving her a moving statue of gleaming metal. The details blurred and a few of the characteristic tendrils of fusion buma crawled across her body before merging again into a sleek armored form, that then darkened to the powder-coated blue of a combat unit.

"I absorbed a supply of armor and copied combat programs, so I can fight if that's what they need." She raised an arm and popped a set of so-called 'wolver' blades out and back, then the armored form shrank and returned to the appearance of flesh and fabric, and Anri was looking at herself sitting in the beanbag chair across the room. "I can spy on Genom again, with someone to set up an identity, or fill a support position if they have skillchips for it. It doesn't matter, I just want to do something meaningful with my life, now that it's mine to decide."

Anri relayed that conversation to Sylia, then waited while the steely haired woman mulled over the idea. Ultimately, the former Knight Saber leader knew, Hyatt had enough pieces of the puzzle that if she wanted to be in, there was no keeping her out. Better to have her on their own terms than frustrated and forcing herself in unexpectedly. "All right," she decided at last, "Bring her to the meeting tonight, we'll see where she can fit into the new operation."

"Good evening ladies." Sylia had put her steel blue hair up in a French braid, similar to but more elaborate than what she wore under her helmet since the nanite transformation that grew it out from her previous short, midnight blue style. Between that and the runway confection of a business dress, it was evident that she'd just come from a Wayne Group meeting of some kind, since she tended to more comfortable (if equally stylish) clothes for everyday wear, while 'Cecilia Ishioka-Wayne' social outings always got the waist-length wig and usually flashed quite a bit more cleavage, belly, and/or leg.

She nodded acknowledgment of the return greetings and ignored her brother clearing his throat pointedly at the feminine address in favor of taking a napkin and a tea biscuit from the tray on the side table, nibbling on it as she sat at the controls of the briefing room's presentation computer. She nudged the mouse to wake it up, but then turned the chair to the side to face everyone instead of the projection screen on the back wall. Wiping her fingers free of crumbs, she looked around at the people who'd gathered at her request.

Nene and Linna were sharing a couch, their hair still wet from the showers after an afternoon's sparring, and the redhead was wearing her ADP uniform as she had a late shift tonight. The straps of a large shoulder holster stood out across her chest since the jacket was folded over her lap. Sylia felt her lip twitch, remembering the young woman's mix of pique and chagrin, admitting to having set a new firing range record in her frustration over the fake Knight Sabers' attacks, and how Leon and his squad had teased her into agreeing to carry one of the bulky .454 Magnums as a sidearm since she'd so handily qualified with it.

Mackie was there too; he'd often attended Sabers briefings in the past, but after performing so well in his first field operation she knew there was no way he'd step back and let her face that hazard alone. Even she had to admit, the Speed King battlemover he'd designed and built with Dr. Raven was an amazing piece of work, having taken a direct orbital weapon strike with nothing more than scorched paint and melted trim.

Since his shift to combat operations would leave them short a pilot and she'd already filled the slot once, Anri was also present, sitting a bit uncertainly on the arm of an over stuffed chair. Nam, with her enhanced speed combined with medical and magical healing skills could be invaluable both for evacuating and tending to civilians and in case of battlefield injuries. Those two were still a bit reserved with Sylia, though they'd gotten to know the other original Knight Sabers through Priss and Sylvie even before learning their secret identities as high tech vigilantes.

The true newcomer was Hyatt, sitting close to Nam on the love seat and looking around nervously at everyone, obviously uncomfortable with the idea that she'd known them all but not made the connection to the 'terrible buma-hunters' Largo had described to her. Nene in particular with her tie to AD Police as well as the Sabers she couldn't meet the eyes of, though Sylia noticed several long glances at the gunbutt peeking out of its holster.

Before the tension could build too high, she began the meeting. "Several days ago, one of my contacts in the Minato ward noticed a suspiciously repainted container, but there wasn't enough evidence to take to the harbor patrol. It was being transferred to a long term holding area near one of the damage zones, but when he checked back on it today it appeared to have been blasted open. Since it wasn't there during the Largo incident it obviously was not damaged at the time, and as you can see -" here the elder Stingray paused and displayed a photo on the big screen, of a plain light purple shipping unit with a ragged hole torn in the top and one side, "- the pattern of damage is more consistent with something bursting out from inside. He wasn't able to make a detailed examination, but from the pictures taken through the breach," several still shots flicked on and off the screen, until it stopped on one showing the corner of an oversized, wrecked hibernation pod with a distinctive corporate logo visible, "it looks like the truth is going to be something very big, and very nasty."

She made another adjustment to the control console, and the view zoomed in on that logo, then shrank to an inset beside a clearer view of the same logo, on the masthead of a press release from Tyrell Biogenetique S. A., announcing the deployment of a new breed of genetically engineered warbeast to the Antarctic battle lines, properly named Discinderius Horridus but called by the marketing department 'Shredzilla.'

After giving everyone a moment to look over the pictures and stats of the beast, Sylia continued. "Fortunately, there's been only faint traces of such a creature on the loose, as even the AD Police would be ill equipped to deal with a creation meant to face platoons of combat buma and battlemovers. At the same time, in the current climate there's no way we could resume operating as the Knight Sabers. Even if we could, without Priss our tactical formation would be too weak. That's why I've invited a few new members, as you can see," she said, nodding toward the three buma women. "Some of our patterns will need adjustment with a larger squad, but it will also increase our tactical flexibility significantly. The first question on the table, is what name and image to present now that 'the Knight Sabers' have been vilified before the world."

Nene tried to suppress a giggle and snorted indelicately, thinking of the sketch Leon had given her of Saber White as Sailor Moon.

Catching the glance her way, Sylia shot that idea down preemptively, stating firmly, "No, I am NOT going as Moon anything, no matter how funny that sketch of Nene's is." Mackie opened his mouth, only to receive a quelling glare. "No, absolutely not," she repeated.

"I was just going to suggest 'Moonlight Shadow,'" he protested.

"No. No moons, knights, or blades," his sister insisted. "The point is to create an identity separate from the Knight Sabers, not remind people of it."

"I know you weren't too happy about the incident, but the 'Lovely Aces' already have a little exposure, and good press," Linna suggested.

Mackie grimaced. "It's not too bad as far as it goes," he replied, "but kind of... girly, if I'm finally on the active team."

Anri shifted to sit fully in the chair, and spoke up with the next gap in the discussion. "You try to appear, do the mission, and disappear," she observed. "How about 'Silver Mist,' or something to do with a mirage?"

Several other suggestions were made and discussed, but none really seemed to capture the group's imagination or suggest a visual theme with hardsuits out of the equation, and they got sidetracked by that to individual suggestions. Nam noticed that Hyatt seemed to be inching forward and shrinking back as it went on, and nudged her ribs hard enough to make her squeak in surprise.

Now the center of attention, she was obliged to speak up. "I can fill whatever position is needed by shifting, but with that unpleasant person that used to operate in Gotham 'Joker' isn't the kind of name I'd want. However, 'Ha-chan...' I've had that nickname. It sounds a bit like 'hachi,' eight in English, so perhaps I could be called 'Crazy Eight,' or 'Wild Eight,'" Hyatt suggested, "since Linna-sempai and Nene-sempai are already proclaimed as aces."

Sylia cocked her head. "That's not a bad idea," she said reflectively. She nodded toward Mackie and added, "We already have a 'Speed King,' and if we used the European suites Nam could be Cups Queen, for the healing symbology. To further obscure any connection to the Knight Sabers' all female operatives, I've created a bulky armored suit with a voice changer. I can use it to pose as Coins Jack, fixer and coordinator for the new mercenary group 'Straight Flush.' That leaves Swords Ace and Wands Ace for Linna and Nene as the front line fighters, with their superhuman martial arts abilities."

"Wait, front line?" Nene protested. "I mean, sure I can fight now, but how am I supposed to jam enemy communications or hack targets, not to mention keep our own tactical net scrambled and secure while I'm thumping the bad guys?"

"Since the hardsuits are so distinctive to the Knight Sabers, Straight Flush can't use them, and that means only minimal ability to mount and power the support equipment you require in that role," Sylia explained. "While the Speed King can easily be fitted to transport equipment cases to use in dedicated cracking operations that call for your inimitable touch, between my innate abilities and a suitably genderless armor's bulk, I'll be more than capable of filling the communications and electronic warfare role under the new paradigm. Minimizing the chance of my abilities being seen in use will also be important to keeping the new group distinct from the Knight Sabers."

With that decided, and given the prior appearances of the newly named Swords Ace and Wands Ace, the basic visual theme was set as heavy boots and gloves and a colored tabard over a dark body suit, made of bulletproof nanoweave and supplemented by hard armor plates in critical areas. Thick but flexible mats of the same material could protect the abdomen where mobility was still necessary, and of course they'd wear helmets to hide their identity and mount sensory and communications equipment. Mackie could wear a similar outfit while piloting the Speed King, if without hard armor on the extremities due to its limited cockpit space, while Sylia's Coins Jack battleframe would simply be painted so its wide shoulder housings and angled torso suggested the tabards of the rest of the team.

Hyatt would shift into a similar form as needed, coloring her combat armor to match the others' bodysuits and disguising her head with a visor, faceplate, and a pair of 'cat ear' sensor booms. Everyone, of course, would have detailing or trim appliques to match their new codename, and the team aircraft would be called 'Cardshark' instead of 'Knightwing.' Opinions were divided on whether that should double as Anri's call sign; a long time pilot she thought it was good enough while Nam and Mackie thought she should be known as 'Dealer.'

The meeting began to break up at that point into smaller groups and Nene had to head in to work, so after quickly scheduling tactics exercises and passing out signal bracelets to the new members the meeting turned into more of a dinner party and shifted venue to a Korean barbecue restaurant down the road from the Ishioka farm.

* * *

><p>Note that in the context of the Japanese governing body, "Diet" is pronounced "dee-eht"<p>

Buma-tech cybernetics needing an external support system - mainly seen in ADP Files (circa 2027) and Crash (2034) where the Cyberpunk influences were more pronounced, these are the backpacks and handheld units cabled to various slummers' big, clunky borg parts. None of the subjects act all that stable, as one might expect from genre convention.

Type-9 military battlemover - apparently these first appeared in a side-story manga or video game; my knowledge of them comes from the "Bubblegum Crisis EX" sourcebook for the BGC RPG once published by R. Talsorian Games. It's a clunky looking beast with two stubby legs that have small wheels in the knees and a third, larger, wheel hanging off the butt below a pair of 'ring rails' with mounting hardpoints for various weapon systems, two of which are typically occupied by oversized gorilla-arms. There are a pair of smaller retractable arms built into the cheese wedge shaped torso section, roughly equivalent to the arms of a K-12 in terms of size. Crouching down onto the wheels, the unit can make 50mph/80kph, but that's still nothing on the DD, intended as its replacement. Though much larger and better armed the unit itself is roughly equivalent to a Hurricane motoslave. I'd expect the combat engineers have a specialized crane ringrail attachment and possibly others as well, and oversized welding equipment that the small arms can use while the large ones hold heavy parts in place. Of course, if they're on hand heavy weapons are just a hardpoint swap away, and it's designed for carried weapons as well. They're known for exceptional strength and responsiveness due to integrating then-cutting-edge medical prosthetic technology into the control and actuation systems, as Sylia mentioned.

Aperture Science - Unless you've been hiding under a snowbank in Antarctica it's nearly a certainty you at least heard about Portal, the 'fun little bonus game' originally packaged with Half-Life 2 that turned into a runaway smash hit. The reference in this scene isn't any major plot element, it's mainly just to show that Genom isn't letting an (apparent) totally new technology pass by them unremarked. And too, "For the good of all of us (except the ones who are dead)" could easily be the corporate slogan. GLaDOS's insanity also seems apropos for a buma-brain-based AI that's gone off the rails.

Mr. Pettybone - I'm pretty sure this is in fact not the character I'm actually trying to reference, I know it was one of Droopy Dog's pseudonyms but it's also the only name I can think of for the one-shot mild mannered scientist character who invents Portable Holes in one of the old Hanna Barberra or possibly Warner Brothers cartoons, a black liquid that could be squirted out into a puddle to dry and reached into or through, then picked up and rolled or folded like rubber to be moved. A dastardly burglar stole a supply of holes and went on a crime spree with them before being tricked into putting himself into prison via the back wall, and in the epilogue the scientist's nagging Lady MacBeth-type wife trips into one on the floor of the lab and finds herself in a fiery cave being greeted by a red-faced fellow with a trident. "My, that was a deep one," says Pettybone just before the iris out to credits.

"The Bad Touch" is by The Bloodhound Gang, and actually references using a particular sexual position 'so we can both watch X-Files' but with two decades after the song's release for popular culture to move on, Hyatt's owner had no idea what 'X-Files' was, and just figured it must have been something on the Discovery Channel, since that's mentioned in the chorus. Hence getting it on in front of a nature documentary. Hopefully I have gotten the points of the scene and the explanation across while avoiding being explicit. The orbit diving takes after 2040 in the delphinid aeroshell, but the movie 'Dark Star' got there first in terms of reentry via surfing.

Mentioning the fate of Nene's scooter, now scorned in favor of a more exciting ride, also seemed like a fun detail to add, and Hyatt has to get around the city somehow now that she doesn't have Magnus's company car to drive. On that count, it's worth mentioning that Hyatt knows that the Knight Sabers know about the Genaros escapees being buma, and that Nene and the others are Nam's friends, but not that Nene is or rather was a Knight Saber, or for that matter who any of the other (former) members are, or about Cynthia's story, at the time of her seaside walk.

Lovely Aces - this is a reference to the Lovely Angels (don't call them the Dirty Pair!) and before one of the revisions was even more direct. Classic Yuri's hair was long and deep blue, and Kei a bit spikier and red-orange, but given the collateral damage level in this fic the comparison seemed quite apt, and also set up a possible new organizational identity for the reformed group. Many readers will also be familiar with the epic Undocumented Features series by the folks over at Eyrie Productions, Unlimited, which prominently features the Pair vs. Buma in one of the memorable early scenes. It probably comes as no surprise given my 'cinematic title and end credits/notes' style that UF is a major if indirect inspiration for my own insanely huge writing project, especially in working up the courage to say "Damn the in-jokes, full speed ahead!" and just put the thing online; let people say what they will. As PCHammer put it in one of his parts, "If at first you don't succeed, keep on sucking 'till you do succeed." For those unfamiliar with either the UF version or the originals, Dirty Pair is essentially a two woman Dirty-Harry-plus-comedy space opera. The more recent anime Kiddy Grade follows a similar premise, if more seriously and with a swirl of conspiracy theory as well; if you like one you'll probably like the other. Dirty Pair Flash was a remake apparently intended to appeal to a slightly younger audience, it's not as bad as that makes it sound but still inferior to the original in my holy-ahem-humble opinion.

AV-4 - Take your basic large commercial van and replace the wheels with ducted fan units and you essentially have the AV-4, staple of the Cyberpunk 2020 RPG setting, from which the "aerodyne" designation is also taken. What I've called Bumaroid Disassosciative Disorder is one of the very few appearances of anything like the RPG's "humanity loss" game balance mechanic for people getting cybernetics, but I take a much less rigid approach to it than the game, maybe mid way between it and the genre-defining Gibson novels.

Waitress buma Bu-30D-68435 - The first draft name was actually B-3TA, a reference to one episode of the G1 Transformers cartoon where several characters were thrown far back in time to the beginning of the Cybertronians' (Not yet even Transformers, as such systems either had not been invented yet or were restricted to the Guardians, since the loyal Guardians had the same design as Omega Supreme who was canonically tyhe last survivor or them after himself joining the uprising) rebellion against their creators, the Quintessons. The leader of the rebellion was a female-styled robot with the civilian model slave brand (AKA the Autobot symbol) known as Beta - her lieutenant was A-3 who later became Alpha Trion. That designation style doesn't fit with the buma that have previously appeared, however, so I changed it to a simple serial number, with job-specific modifications to the base 30D chassis too numerous to consider each a separate model. 30D (or d30) in turn is a reference to my dice-collector side, because who doesn't love those golf-ball size 30 siders? While 68435 doesn't have any such role planned, given that she's about to be handed over to one of the rogue sexaroids it's a safe assumption that she'll be freed of her slave programming and either upgraded to pass for human in a crowd and set up with an identity or absorbed into Wayne Group holdings with a complicated lease contract that ends up amounting to being on roughly even footing with the rest of the employees. Don't be holding your breath about seeing her again.

This world ... is corrupt! Etc. - Ha-chan's roots are showing; originally only intended as a cameo character her look and tendency to cough up blood were lifted from Excel Saga's Hyatt, though her personality was purely developed to fill the role I had for her. Of course, anyone who follows Excel Saga knows that Hyatt just won't stay dead, and she insisted on reanimating and taking on an ongoing part, like some background character in a TV show that unexpectedly turns into a regular. The corrupt world speech is from the opening monologue by Lord Il Palazzo, leader of the Ideological Organization ACROSS of which Hyatt and Excel are promptly introduced as field agents. Likewise, control of the city is presented as 'a prudent first step' to dominion over a single country and then, the world! Her new hairdo is based on her Excel-sempai, but don't hold your breath for Excel-ian manic energy. The old coughing-up-blood-and-rising-from-the-dead Hyatt might have fit in better with the Addams family, but I didn't think of it until just now, unfortunately.

Minato ward - the main dock district of Tokyo and Megatokyo after it.

Swords, wands, cups & coins - these correspond to spades, clubs, hearts, and diamonds in US decks. Note also that with the Japanese convention of putting the family name first, "Coins Jack" is actually a plausible real (male) name. Not likely perhaps, but plausible nonetheless.

I'll be adding a picture of Coins Jack to the BDPreread Files section, but if you have a copy of the _Bubblegum Crisis: EX_ sourcebook from R. Talsorian Games, it's basically the Fright Knight armor without the trim patterns on the knees and chestplate but with a logo on the left side of the chestplate, a yellow circle with a pentacle (representing a gold coin) with a capital J superimposed over it in red. I did a little highlighting with the airbrush, so it looks pretty good for your basic coloring book page.

Tyrell Biogenetique - Based in Brazil, Tyrell is to genetic engineering what GENOM is to robotics, and their warbeasts are the shock troops of the Arab-African-South America side of the Polar War, though there are a noticeable number of their Replicants (now granted full citizen status after a huge scandal and anti-slavery protests on behalf of these human-based creations in 2029) in the US armed forces, a legacy of the prewar era. They'll be popping up a lot as we move beyond the events of the BGC OVAs.

Silver Mist - one of the earlier versions of what became Guardian 215 was used for a Marvel Super Heroes character (the old TSR version, with the named ability ranks) in the form of a series of powersuit designs, beginning with the Quicksilver, and progressing through Armored Quicksilver, Silverbullet, and Silvermist. I highly doubt anyone who would recognize this reference will ever read this, but now you know.

The burly detective - 'burly detective syndrome' is a writing critic term for constantly referring to characters by some characteristic other than their name. It's one I particularly have trouble with, because not only did I have 'don't repeat words' pounded into me at every level of schooling from 1st grade to 200-level college English Composition, it serves as a handy way to keep sneaking in bits of description so they're more than a gender and nametag. I've never shied from laughing at myself, so with the opportunity to slip the phrase in I couldn't resist.

Besondertactischgruppe - 'special tactical squad' in German, or an approximation at least. I don't know if that's actually what Berlin calls its version of a SWAT team, but it's the best I could cobble together from an English-to-German dictionary.

Magnetic Rose - while I don't know the name of the anime involved, this is the title of an absolutley awesome AMV set to Harajuku's "The Phantom of the Opera." While not the Reps' style per se it served as well as anything for a random club name.

Orange Milk - said like "milk from an orange" not "milk which is orange" though given the ADPolice Files canon cafe named "Piss" it would hardly be the worst-named gin joint in Japan.

Ordinary as earthquakes - it's apparently a rare week in Tokyo without three or four earthquakes strong enough to feel, and hundreds that only instruments pick up every day. Los Angelinos reading this would probably have a similar attitude, but to those of us in the eastern US, Europe or areas similarly devoid of active tectonic activity it's something of a mental stretch. It was the best comparison I could think of, though - fire drills would also work, but aren't usually held frequently enough to compare. I note that this scene was written over a year before the RL earthquake that hit Japan and caused such trouble with their Daiichi nuclear power plant in Tokushima. I haven't seen it written down, but doesn't that just translate as "Big One?"

Guardian 215 should be imagined with the vocal talents of Susan Blu; if you don't know her by name, she did (among other shows) Arcee on the post-movie Transformers episodes, as well as in the movie itself. You can even keep the flanging effect if you like, though it's not really there.

Many thanks to Drakensis and Necratoid for their feedback, as well as everyone on the BDPreread mailing list - you'll get your name listed if you actually make commentary, but just reading and finding nothing bad enough to complain about is still commentary of a sort.

Drakensis used to keep a remote archive of the story on his web site, but unfortunately it no longer exists. Since he's a damn good fic writer himself, I'll give a link to his profile instead, as a thank you for the effort when he did. It's at .net/u/347490/drakensis

Special thanks to Bob Schroeck, Consulting Acronymologist. He also happens to be the author of another rather good BGC fanfic called _Drunkard's Walk II_ (The first one is not available for public consumption, but it's a rather modular series.) The Drunkard's Walk home page is .net/~ and Bob's message board is at .com/

Bubblegum Crisis belongs to Youmex and Animeigo, I make no claims otherwise. Please don't sue me, I have no money to speak of and fanfic does more to promote your products than anything else I know of - without it, I never would have known about anime at all, and I'd certainly never have bought the BGC tapes based on the sucky box copy.

Ranma 1/2 I'm not so sure of, except that the creator was Rumiko Takahashi, not me, and that I make no claims to own IT either. I THINK that the Ranma manga are done by Viz in the US, but that may be incorrect.

The Bionic Six is similarly of unknown provenance, but I have a very vague and unreliable memory that it may have been animated by Suncoast video... In any case, it's STILL not my own creation.

_Dykstra's War_ is by Jeffery D Kooistra, published by Baen Books.

Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z were created by Akira Toriyama, owned overall by Bandai I think, and released on video in the US by FUNimation and in manga by Dark Horse (again not so sure about that one - could be Viz)

Sailor Moon was created by Naoko Takeuchi, and is undoubtedly also owned by some animation studio or another. DIC? I know that the RPG rights in North America used to belong to Guardians of Order.

Excel Saga coomes from the deranged mind of Koshi Rikdo, and is published in the US by Viz. And those translated tankubon are damn well done, I must say.

EOF


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